What do faith and cinnamon rolls have in common? Well, if ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ why can’t faith be like a plate cinnamon rolls? Am I deep or what?

We were in Jerome Arizona. Jerome is a great town up in the mountains of Arizona. From all accounts it was once a rip-snorting, rough and ready mining town in the 1800’s, but eventually it became pretty much an empty ghost town until the 1960’s. It was then that the flower children discovered it. They soon moved in or ‘squatted,’ depending on your perspective, and started living in Jerome. Of course, as soon as the town started to fill up, those who had abandoned it remembered that they owned it, and they decided it was time to start charging rent or expecting buy-outs.

Well, to make a long story short, the creativity and the optimism of the 1960’s won out as the new residents started up small business to pay the bills and tourism went through the roof. Many of those hippies still live there and Jerome is now the third largest tourist attraction in Arizona—after the Grand Canyon and Sedona. I love this story because it has the feel of frontier risk and opportunity. But, more than that, to take something lost and give it a second chance is downright Christian, is it not? Christ is all about taking that which is lost and giving it new life, but I digress.

While we were there, we had to do the most essential thing any traveller has to do—no, not that! Remember that I am from Canada and the most essential thing for Canadian travellers is that we find GOOD coffee. We went to a place that my buddy Rick knew of, but alas it was closed. I almost started to panic, but the high altitude and lack of caffeine made panicking too difficult. Thankfully, next door and down a few steps was this little shop that you could easily walk by without noticing. This harbinger of delight is called “Gisel’s Café and Bakery.”

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“Can I have a do-over?” People usually ask that question because they’ve made a mistake of some sort, but sometimes God gives us do-overs because we did everything right!

There I stood in beautiful downtown Brenda AZ in the Rec Hall of the Black Rock RV Park. In front of me were two wonderful people. Rick, a preacher friend that I finally got to see in the flesh after 16 years of Internet tag and Carol, his soon to be wife. They were standing in front of me because I was about to marry them. Rick looked uncomfortable in his “monkey suit” as he called it, but even his crusty cowboy ways couldn’t hide his obvious joy. Carol looked radiant, which is a bit surprising since she had spent the better part of the week running around like a one-armed wallpaper hanger, taking care of all the necessary details to make the wedding happen.

A few minutes earlier, just as the ceremony was about to begin, Rick leaned over to me and said: “Now Grant, make sure there is some laughter in this wedding because the Christian Life is about joy and celebration.” I took that comment to be a first-class challenge, but I really didn’t have to work too hard at bringing any laughter because of Rick’s homemade processional CD.

Carol loves 50’s music, so the processional began with “Earth Angel,” which led into a recording of Rick introducing his bride as only Rick can. Next was the tympani to 20th Century Fox which lead to the bride’s marching orders: “Going to the Chapel”.

The only problem was that it was all recorded as one track so when the sound guy, half way through “Earth Angel,” accidentally started the song over again, there was nothing he could do but speed up the track. That made the remainder of “Earth Angel” sound like it was recorded by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Laughter naturally ensued.

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There is at least one thing that rural, small town and big city type people have in common-besides the obvious things like skin and kids and bills and such. Do you want to know what that one thing is? A fire! I have been part of a crowd in rural New Brunswick at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, and I have also been part of a fire-fueled crowd here in Toronto. Fires attract people-wherever they occur!

One time, Sheila and I were out for a walk and we saw some massive, inky black plumes raising into the cloudless blue sky just a block or two from where we were. We decided to put our lunch date on hold and go check out the fire.

As we started our pilgrimage to the fire, many others joined us along the way. One man suggested that it was the rubber factory that was just over on the next block. I immediately prayed that it wasn’t! What a nasty problem that would have been! Finally, we got over onto Cawthra Road. It runs along the railroad tracks, so we had an unobstructed view of the fire a few hundred yards from us, on the other side of the tracks.

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