I am a fan of summer camps.

Though my husband didn’t venture off to camp as frequently as I did as a child, he did attend music camp. As part of the closing program, the camp would bestow an award for camper of the week, an award my husband mocked . . . until he won it. The best award I managed to snag at my church’s camp was the trophy plaque for the cleanest cabin, but it was a daily award and my cabinmates and I had to relinquish it twenty-four hours later.

At the youth camps I attended, the awards stakes were higher. The very first day of camp, the camp director announced that a male and female camper would be crowned Mr. and Miss Camp (insert camp name) at the end of the week. The staff would be on the lookout for campers who showed Christian virtues—you know, love, kindness, purity, and let's not forget athletic prowess, popularity and good looks.

Putting aside my teenaged pettiness and envy, it struck me then as it does now that handing out awards for Christian virtues seems a bit at-odds with, well, Christian virtue. There’s something transactional about it. If you do this, I’ll do that for you. If you're this way, I'll reward and applaud you.

We hear echoes of transactions in the garden and the wilderness: If you eat the fruit of the tree of life, you won’t die. If you bow down and worship me, I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world and glory. The first Adam accepted the transaction; the second Adam didn’t need to. His already was the kingdom and the glory and the honor.

It’s hard to shake our progenitor’s affinity for transactions, and we carry it over in our prayers and expectations of what God should do for us. If I pray enough and work hard, then God is obligated to do what I want. Imagine the blessings and answered prayers we could amass in the here and now because God would keep his end of the bargain we made with him.

But we aren't really playing "Let's Make a Deal" with God. That's not how God works with us. it's impossible for us to ever keep our end of whatever deal we might imagine to get God to do every single thing we want.

It should be very good news for us that, far better than keeping his end of the bargain, God keeps his promises, and is “a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” (Nehemiah 9:17)

In her book Keeping a Quiet Heart, Elisabeth Elliot writes: “Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.”

And any blessings and answers to my transactional prayers give way to the reality that God has blessed me, and you, with every spiritual blessing here, and there.