I never thought I would say this but I’m getting old. I have squeaks and pops emanating from my knees. I make old man noises sometimes when I get up in the morning. I have hair where there wasn’t any before and no hair where their used to be. I don’t listen to music as loud as I used to, or maybe it is just that I can’t hear it anymore!

It is funny, though, because I’m not always conscious of my long walk into the abyss of old age. Most of the time, I feel and think and consider myself pretty much the same person I was when I was in my late-teens and early twenties. I feel hip. I am a ‘with it’ kind of guy. I may not be as up on the music of today as I once was but that’s only because today’s music isn’t any good. It has nothing to do with my ability to keep current–it’s all about taste! I can prove this to you because I have an MP3 player, so there! I am just as plugged in and unaware of the people around me as the next guy. Not only that, but I have a Facebook account, a blog, and I even podcast my sermons. I’m so cutting edge that I have to change my blades regularly!

To be honest with you, it’s only when I look in the mirror that I am most aware of the passage of time. Thankfully my eyesight is going as well, so I don’t see my face with the same kind of detail that I once did. I consider this God’s grace at work.

Now you might think that I am lamenting my launch into upper-middle-age, but I’m not. I am rather enjoying it. I feel like I have a better handle on things. I feel like I have one foot in today’s culture and one foot in the past and you know what? I like it. I like being able to look back and have some life-experience under my belt. I also like looking forward and being part of today. I like knowing that I may not be up on every new thing, but neither am I living in the past, or longing for the good-old-days. I try, as best as I can, to live for today.

I’ve been downtown a few times lately. As the image that accompanies this article illustrates, one of the things that I love about taking pictures downtown is the blending of old with new. You have the classic with the cutting-edge, the timeless with the timely. I believe the blending of these two elements work to create a stronger aesthetic overall. The power and presence of the older buildings becomes clearer when they stand alongside the new. In the same way, you can better appreciate the minimal, clean, vision of the new, when it is contrasted against the ornate of the old.

I think the same is true for the health and growth of the Church. We need to keep one foot in the past. The traditions, the richness, and the foundation of the unchangeable Gospel are essential. We need to know that we are connected to all that has happened before. We aren’t disconnected. We didn’t just come out of nowhere. We are part of the flow of God’s working. We are built on the foundation of those who came before us. The more we know and learn from our past, the greater will be our overall understanding of who we are and what we have been called to do. At the same time, we need to understand today. We need to work at becoming all things to all people, so that, by all means, some might be saved (1 Cor. 9:22). We have to find relevant, effective ways to connect with our present culture because we all have the job of being entry points to heaven in the here and now. We are shaped by our past and connected to our future, but we are expected to live out both as we represent Christ today. Our greatest witness comes from combing the old and new, who knew?

It was a cold day. The snow had a layer of fluffiness over a harder, crunchier, icier bottom. The inlet from Lake Ontario was frozen. Ducks had given up swimming and taken up their less-than-graceful equivalent to skating. The ice was full of greens and blues. White-greyish lines, where the ice had cracked and healed and cracked again, crisscrossed the surface like an alien roadmap.

After watching the comedy of “Ducks on Ice” for a while, I decided to go down to the lakeshore. There I found ice-covered driftwood and huge clusters of breakwater rocks covered with inches of ice as each crashing wave contributed its own thin coat.

At one point I was going to venture out onto the pier that marked the entrance into the inlet, but then I saw ice everywhere and I changed my mind. I didn’t want to slip and fall. I didn’t want to drop my camera. I didn’t want to get wet. OK, I was being a wimp. (I prefer to call it “being wise”, if you don’t mind.)

As I walked further down the shore and looked back I couldn’t help but be impressed by what I saw. The railing of the pier had been completely covered with ice. I’m not just talking about ice around the railing, I am talking about sheets of ice that went down the sides of the railing; connecting the horizontal supports with the handrail above them.

Such a sight was “cool” enough but there was “icing” on this cake–the lake was expressively expressive! As the waves hit the pier with considerable force, they came up against the side of the pier and swelled to what can only be considered Hawaii 5-0 proportions.

As I watched the beautiful form of these waves come, one after another, I took the photo that accompanies this account. Note the top of the head of a small boy that is just tall enough to be seen over the handrail. There he stands, in a place I was too wise to venture. Ah the hubris of youth! How reckless! How irresponsible! Kids!

The only problem with my irresponsible kid theory, though, was that this little guy was standing, hand-in-hand with his grandfather. Grandparents! Granddad must have lost it! Maybe he didn’t like his grandson? Maybe his grandson was a holy terror? Maybe he wanted him to “wave” goodbye—literally? Somehow though, they looked like they were having a great time together, don’t they? Ice all around. Waves so close you could almost touch them. Spray everywhere.

As I look at this photo now, I still hold to my initial assessment of the danger of standing where they were. I was right and they were wrong. I was wise and they were foolhardy. Still there has to be a lesson to be learned somewhere in all this, don’t you think? What do you think the lesson is? The one thing I DO know is that the lesson doesn’t have anything to do with a little kid and an old man being braver than anyone else!

I think the lesson is simply this–it’s not where you are, it’s who you are with. Even a dangerous place can be safe if your hand is in the hand of someone bigger who is able to protect you.

It seems to me that there was once this guy named Peter who got a bit scared because of the waves that surrounded him. He had a good reason to be scared. The waves were high and he was starting to sink! But, just as he started to sink, Jesus reached out his hand and everything changed. Notice though, that the waves weren’t calmed until Peter and Jesus got back into the boat. Peter was still out in the waves. So what kept him above the water wasn’t a safer environment, it was simply that his hand was in the hand of someone bigger who was able to hold him up (Matthew 14:29-32).

It’s not where you are, it’s who you are with. The next time you are afraid, think about who you’re with. Or, more correctly, think about who is with you!

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)

Farmington is as small-town Maine as small-town Maine gets. Actually there are other smaller towns in Maine, but as a snob from Toronto, they just don’t appear on my radar. Farmington is, you guessed it, a farming community. It is one of those towns that you tend to drive through to get somewhere else, even though it is the hometown of Chester Greenwood, the inventor of earmuffs and that’s nothing to sneeze at!

Our family knows of Farmington only because we’ve stayed there a few times coming or going between Toronto and the Maritimes. This time around we noticed fewer motels and less activity. This small-town seems to be getting smaller. At least that was the consensus until we came across a sign that suggested a different trend.

The sign was positioned in the most prominent part of Farmington. Even I couldn’t miss it! Its message was a bold one to say the least–“God still plans to make Farmington His New Jerusalem—soon!” I had to read the sign a few times to make sure I was reading it properly. I mean, I guess I am out of the heavenly loop. I didn’t get the memo that explained, first time around, that Farmington was the place God had chosen for DD (Divine Development) and now I was being told that this was STILL God’s plan. Maybe I should pay closer attention to my email? Still, I should have guessed there was something special about Farmington when such a small town has a WalMart.

At the same time I felt a bit disappointed. I’ve been preaching for years that we could think of the most breathtaking images we have ever seen, multiply them by a billion and still not have any kind of a concept about the majesty of our heavenly condos. Well if Farmington is it, the New Jerusalem is going to be slightly more modest than my imagination led me to believe. Do cutbacks go that high up? Maybe it’s just that God hasn’t started phase one of His ‘Extreme Home Makeover’ yet and I need to reserve my opinion for a later date. Regardless, that sign certainly caught my imagination. I couldn’t get its message out of my head. I wondered about who was behind it.

My first thought was that it was some group lead by a self-proclaimed prophet from the Jimmy Jones School of Evangelism located in Waco, Texas. If you’ve been in Christian circles for any length of time, you have probably met one or two of these people. They tend to worship on their own, having forsaken their Babylon (the established Church), and they tend to have a real good handle on what God wants you to do.

I met someone like this not once, but twice. One meeting was in Charlottetown, PEI. The other occurred after just after moving back to Toronto. What are the chances? Anyway, his deal was that the Apostle Paul was the antichrist and that Armageddon would happen in Quebec and somehow the Hell’s Angels and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney were in on it. He was very adamant that all of this was revealed to him as he studied the Word.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not making fun of this individual. My heart went out to him. He really felt called to proclaim this message sacrificially and he clearly lived a life of single-focussed service that puts most people, including myself, to shame. If he would have allowed me to help him, I would have.

My second thought was a bit more positive: what if the sign is a vision statement? What if, by faith, the Christians in Farmington have this plan that is so outrageously ambitious that those who drive by shake their heads and go, “no way, not here!”? Hey, it’s possible! After all, small towns have a good track record with God. Didn’t Bethlehem win the bid for Jesus’ birth over Jerusalem, so why not Farmington? What if those who paid for this sign are also paying for the vision through prayer and love and sacrifice?

To be honest, my cynical side makes me lean toward the first option, but what if? It makes me curious about what I will see next time we travel through Maine.

When was the last time you and your congregation took such a God-prompted, ginormous step of faith that it made others scratch their heads and laugh? Has that ever happened to you or your congregation? If it hasn’t, why not? Have you even asked God for that kind of a vision? I’d love to be part of a church that was radically determined to do things too big to be accomplished on their own. I’d love to be part of a church that makes people laugh and shake their heads and say, “How did they do that?” I’d rather be part of a church with audacious vision than one with contented dreams. Let’s face it: I blend in better with nuts, if you don’t believe me, just look at my friends!