This past summer we had a group of thirty high school kids and sponsors from LifeSpring Christian Church in Cincinnati stay with us at Keele. They came to Toronto looking for a multicultural experience and a chance to help us serve the community.

It was a wild and busy week. Many of our youth, including my kids, bonded with the Cincinnati group – so much so that they camped out with them for most of the week and lamented their leaving. It was encouraging to see the friendships and fellowship flow. It was also great to have the group help our youth with a door-to-door food drive for the local food bank. The food drive was a big success and it helped to stock the shelves of the food bank at a time when their supplies were critically low.
On the multicultural front, one of the highlights of the week was a visit to the new Hindu BAPS Swaminarayan Temple. To say the structure was impressive, inside and out, is an understatement. I’ve never seen this level of craftsmanship before—period! There are no metal supports or concrete in the complex. In fact, there is not even one nail in this enormous structure. It is made entirely of interlocking stone based on the old school temple building ways perfected in India centuries ago. Each stone was hand-carved in India and then shipped to Toronto where the entire structure was then assembled and finished by volunteers. It took 5 years and untold man-hours, not to mention $40,000,000 to complete. As you can see from the accompanying photo, the work continues even now.

Equally impressive to me were our young tour guides. I would say they were 13-15 years-old, and like any kids you’d run across in Toronto, maybe a bit better behaved, but you know what I mean, they were Canadians through and through. Yet they were also tour guides for the temple and part of the religious community represented by the temple. Their skill in explaining their culture and religion was impressive. Their style was simple, friendly, and matter of fact. It was strange, and quite frankly disturbing to hear them talk so casually about worshipping idols. At the same time, their sincerity was obvious and worthy of respect.

I particularly liked the part of the tour in which they talked about some of the Indian symbols that were carved into the various pillars throughout the temple. They explained, for example, the significance of the elephant. The elephant is powerful, but also a vegetarian, thus it stands for power in the context of non-violence. My favourite symbol was that of the lotus flower. The lotus flower grows in swamps and thus it is an image of purity and beauty growing in the midst of decay. So, the lotus is a symbol that reminds us that it is our duty to have a beautiful life in a world that is often decaying and corrupt. I realize this is a Hindu symbol but, man it preaches!

Toward the end of the tour, our guide talked about how each stone was placed and cleaned and polished by volunteers. The entire community built this impressive structure together. He showed pictures of mothers, fathers, and children, washing and tending the stonework. I couldn’t help but imagine the sense of community, belonging, and identity this sacrifice of time and effort brought to the congregation at this temple. It was a powerful testimony and reminder to me about what’s possible when people get together, work together, sacrifice together and focus together on a united dream. When that happens the results are always impressive.

I walked away from the temple with mixed feelings. There was much to admire, but much, as a follower of Christ, that disturbed me as well.

The thought that I keep coming back to, though, is simply this: What if the Church were as serious about sacrificing, serving, participating in, and uniting over the common goal of building the Kingdom of God as this group of believers were in building a Hindu temple? What if we took the same pride and care in building something that would last beyond our years. What if we were about leaving a legacy that would inspire those who come after us? What if we were just as clear in communicating in natural, simple, effective ways, the importance of our relationship with Christ? What if we all saw ourselves as a lotus of beauty in a world of decay? What could we accomplish together, with all hands polishing and cleaning? What if we were more serious about allowing God to build us into His temple? Now that is a dream worth pursuing!

“Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.” (Ephesians 2:20-21, NLT)

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)