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)