happy songs from the laughter of children at play. Hold my hand as we run through the sweet, fragrant medals, making memories
of what was today for We
have this moment to hold our
hands to touch as it slips through our fingers like sand.
Yesterday's gone and tomorrow may never come, but we have this moment today, you
hear that tiny voice. That's my little girl. She's calling for mommy just to listen to what she has to say, and my
little son
riding There down the hillside
may never be quite
like today.
Me for we
have this moment to hold in our hands and to touch as it slips
through our fingers like sound,
Yes, dear. Yesterday's gone, and
tomorrow may never come, but we have
this moment today,
tender words, gentle touch
and a good cup of coffee,
and someone who loves me
and wants
me to stay,
Hold them near while they're near,
you'll wait for tomorrow and look
back and wish
for today.
Take the blue of the sky and the green of the forest, the gold and the Browns of the freshly moan Hey at the pale shades of spring,
at the circus
of autumn. And my friend, just go out and weave you a lovely today
for we have this moment to hold
it our Hands and
to touch as it slips through
our fingers like sad yesterday,
Tomorrow may never come, but we have
this moment today.
Day. We have this moment today. We have
this moment today.
I can't believe it's 35 years.
35 years, you
know, if I'd have brought my other Bible, Marnie, the red one, the red one, I have the little Yeah. Ah, congratulations. Well, I'm having a little difficulty getting to the conclusion of Luke's Gospel chapter eight. And I had intended this morning to actually conclude that portion with you,
because I find the chapter to be so rich.
But there are a couple of things, a couple of reasons why I probably won't be able to do that this morning. One reason is something else has come to me that I believe I should share a little bit with you on and the other is, I know there's a very important event that some of you ladies are expecting to attend. And this is a very, very important event. I know how important it is for a lot of reasons. I won't go into right now. So I won't be, I won't be lengthy with you this morning. Let me. Let me go back with you to boom, when I was about maybe, oh, eight or nine years old, which is a few years ago now. It's a summer afternoon. It's actually a Sunday and a beautiful, sunny day, beautiful day, Sunday, and the grain is growing in the field, and the corn is growing and it's just about time, you know, to get in there and begin to it's early August, just about time to get into the corn. And it won't be long before it'll be harvest, harvesting the grain. And we come home on from church on the Sunday. And horror of horrors, the neighbors cattle are in the grain. The neighbors cattle are in the grain. And my mother, I can still hear her, Oh, and she as only she could. So that meant you boys. And it was whenever we were addressed by our parents. It was it always began with you boys, you boys. So you boys, change your dad's in you, you know, and you take the cattle back across where they came from, and fix the fence. My dad would say, fix the fence. And the problem was with the fences. The problem was with the fences. I couldn't blame the cattle, because they only did what they wanted to do, but they always used to say, once they get a taste of that, my mother would say, once they get a taste of that, then we're going to have a very difficult time keeping them from this and and she was, she was correct in that. So from these kinds of from these kinds of circumstances,
came the phrase, good fences make good neighbors.
Good fences make good neighbors, and if there's a problem, oftentimes we've seen neighbors that's likely because there's a problem with the fence. There's something about the fence. So you have to look after these fences if you want to, if you want to keep good relationships with your with your neighbors. It wasn't uncommon that the neighbors cattle would cross that fence, and sometimes it would be mom's garden, and sometimes it would be a flower garden, and that would be trampled. But you know, our relationships with our neighbors survive those kinds of circumstances, and I've often wondered, and especially over the last little while, I've been wondering about the durability of those relationships between neighbors, because when I grew up, you could trust your neighbors. And if you went away for some reason, you left everything in the charge of your neighbors. And if your neighbors saw something happening with your property or around your property, they would be the first ones to come and look after it for you. If you were ill, your neighbor would come and do the chores. If they were ill, you would go and do their chores. And there was this mutuality that existed between the neighbors. And as I've thought about that in terms of the kind of relationships, it wasn't just the good fences that that permitted those relationships with neighbors. It was those relationships with the neighbors in that era were forged in fire. They were forged in fire. They were forged in trial. For example. If I could go back with you to 1944
which was a very important year for me,
1944 the first of September. And my grandmother living down here on the Huron line, and let's say she crosses the river that separates us from Michigan, and she visits a friend in Michigan. And this is the first of September, 1944 and the two ladies. Now they sit down and have a cup of tea,
and they both have sons
that are serving in the Second World War.
Now I could say this about all sides of the war. It's not just that applied to one side or the other side. This applies to all sides of these things, but I'm. Talking about the side that I'm familiar with. And so my grandmother begins, then says, you know, I have two sons. Two of my sons are serving right now. One is serving in Europe, and the other is serving. I'm not sure exactly where he is. I think he's in Italy. I have two sons serving now, if I went forward to the end of September of that year, then my grandmother would have said, in one of those conversations with her USA neighbor, I have one son serving. My youngest son was killed in action. Just a few days ago. I got word that he was killed in action. You know, things like this. These are relationships where there's a common bond, and these bonds are so deep that actually, they are deeper than nationalism. They're deeper than the tribal spirit that we all can be influenced by. It was also common during that period of time where families would have maybe eight, 910, children would be born into a family. And it was not and it was very unusual for, for example, a family having 10 babies, 10 little babies, 10 children. It was unusual for all tend to survive to adulthood, and very often one, two, or sometimes three, my grandmother, Campbell, idly, three did not survive to adulthood. And it wasn't just this family that was experiencing it, but their neighbors also had experienced similar there would be illnesses and sicknesses, diphtheria and different things would come through and take little ones, and didn't have the kind of medical facilities and medical basically interventions that we have now. One of my father's uncles, he had several daughters in his family, and he had one little boy. And you can just imagine the way he treated and thought of that little boy, his one son that he had. And the son came to be about 1112, years old, and
and he had an attack of appendicitis,
and they lost him in that an attack of appendicitis, and this was not uncommon during that period of time, but what that did, and no one would seek this, no one wanted this. These were calamities. These were tragedies, but what that did is that tended to cement relationships among neighbors, because everyone had gone through adversities that were too deep to even talk about, unutterably deep and tragic, but it cemented because they could relate one to the other. This had nothing to do with boundaries of fences. This had nothing to do with even international boundaries. But there were these kinds of things that brought these relationships into such close association. So a number of years ago, of course, we had in Ontario, we have one, and we still have this to today. It's a provincial statute. It's called the line Fence Act. Line Fence Act, you may not be familiar with that. Line Fence Act basically deals with makes provision for disputes about fences, because, again, good fences make good neighbors, and so there would be arrangement or provision made for disputes to be settled and resolved if there was an issue with the fence, for example, if you had a lot here on St Joseph island of 100 acres, and for example, on facing the roadway in the front of your property, on the right side of your lot, for 200 rods deep, the first 100 rods you would be responsible for the fence on the other side of your property you'd be responsible For the back half. Or the last 100 rods of fence. So the lots were 80 rods wide and 200 rods steep. And it was like that, alternating all the way down where one farmer is responsible for half of the of the boundary line between himself and the neighbor. And if there was a dispute that needed to be resolved. Then they had viewers that would come, and I think they would have, they would have about three men who would be selected from the community, who were well respected in the community, and independent minded and well experienced. And they would come and they would view the situation, and they would make recommendations. This was all part of the line and Fence Act, which still exists to this day, because they knew that good fences make good neighbors. And sometimes, if you have a problem with the fence, then you have a problem with the relationship between neighbors, and you have disputes. Let me read something to you that kind. Comes to mind.
This is in Proverbs 18.
It says a brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of the castle.
A brother offended
is harder to win than a strong city,
and contentions are like the bars of a castle.
This is the reason why we need to be so
careful about these relationships we have with our neighbors. Is because if once offenses rise to the surface. Once one feels offended, once the relationship between neighbors changes from one of trust and confidence and mutuality to one of distrust and the sense of being threatened, then you have disaster just looming and waiting to occur, and you have the kind of thing that exists now between Russia and Ukraine, you realize that those are neighbors.
Those are neighbors,
and they have a long history that we'll not deal with this morning, but it's an example of what can happen when relationships between neighbors goes terribly wrong. Now we have some situations. I remember when we were again, I'm kind of going back memory, memory lane a little bit with you this morning, when we were boys. And, for example, I remember one of my birthdays early on and and what I got in my birthday was a baseball. I got a baseball. I mean, we didn't get huge presence or, you know, numerous presents, but we got something. And one year, I remember getting a baseball, and we went out and there was still snow on the ground in April, we would go to little clear patches. There would be a clear patch over here and a clear patch over there, and we'd all stand in different clear patches, and we'd throw the baseball to each other, and that was great fun. And sometimes on an afternoon, we would we would go out, and we would play with baseball. We'd play with the ball, play catch, and then there would rise, oftentimes, sometimes bickering, something would happen, and usually would be occasioned by the baby in the family not getting his way. I won't say who the baby in the family was. You all know. So the baby of the family didn't get his way, and sometimes there would be a little bit of a dispute, and everything would rise and so on. There's a squabble, a squabble, and I can hear my father's voice right now. This is what he'd say, you boys put that ball away until you can learn to play right. So, so there was a, there was a such a thing as playing right, and then there was such a thing as playing that was not right. And my dad's word was law when it came to time like times like that. And my dad never had to say anything twice, so he said it one time. So we put the ball away. What we were doing then is we were thinking, Well, okay, well, we got to play, right? So it means, without squabbling, you've got to change the environment. The atmosphere is wrong. You are permitting an environment in an atmosphere where you're not playing, you're actually going to war with each other, and I will not tolerate that, because that's not right, and you have to learn that games playing is not to be conducting and conducted in that kind of environment. So with this most recent hockey game that's well celebrated by many, which is not a big deal with Joe. It was a football game. It would be different. But with this hockey game has become more than a hockey game. I can tell you what right now, and I'll say only say this, if my father was here, and all of the atmosphere and environment that has been permitted to occur, my father would not watch that game. He loved hockey, loved hockey,
but he would not watch that game.
And you know why? Because in his mind, which was a good one, he would say, You're not playing right. There's an atmosphere and there's an environment that is existing that must not exist. You must play right, or don't play at all. So he'd say, put that puck away until you can learn to play right. And that has a lot to do again with good fences and good neighbors. So I'll share just a few thoughts about the problem with fences. When the fences are a problem, when the fences become a problem, we have I just found some statistics for 2022 i. The population in Canada. Do you know what it is? Population in Canada is 39 million, just a little bit north of 39 million. The population United States of America is something like little bit north of 333 million people. So you know approximately, you can always sort of say 10% we're a little bit more, maybe than 10% but not much in terms of the population to our neighbors, United States of America, 333 million. We have something like 39 million population in Canada,
deaths caused by opioids,
and especially fentanyl,
fentanyl drug use where people would take cocaine and then taking cocaine, but It was there was cut with fentanyl, and many times, individuals taking the cocaine had no idea that it was cut with fentanyl. They didn't know, and they were snorting, inhaling these lines of cocaine. And I know we had individuals very close to Pat's, to pat and her relations, her cousin, niece, one of her sons, died as a consequence of this. But we had deaths in 2022 in Canada of about 7300 individuals. 7300 died from opioids poisoning, or especially fentanyl poisoning, in 2022 that's a lot of lives. And the majority of these would be young people, youth, young people, I know in Sudbury, Ontario, they have on one of the major streets in Sudbury, on a corner, they have placed little markers for individuals that have died as a result of fentanyl opioid poisoning, and now they're thinking about a memorial to be placed in a different location. This is, this is a disaster. And
so in the United States of America, in 2022
the deaths resulting from opioid
poisoning of 70 over 74,000
74,000 lives. And now you have coming to administration in the United States of America, coming to a place of governance. You have, you have, you have a president, and you have his staff and his people put in place his cabinet, and you have people taking this very seriously, very seriously, and making every effort to deal with this in some kind of remedial way.
We should be doing the same thing.
If there's something that we can do to resolve this or lessen, to reduce this. Now, of course, I would say, and this is self evident, that one of the things we all need to do to reduce this is to reduce the demand from within our countries. We need to reduce the demand. It's one thing for something to be coming in and through a fence that is not being properly constructed, and something dangerous is coming through that neighbor's fence. That's one thing. But it's another thing for us to have something existing within our own borders, within our own nations that is creating this demand. And so this brings me to many different things, and I know over the years, I've taken a very strong position against anything that is chemical being taken into the human body. Now I'm not talking about prescription medications here, but I'm talking about things like alcohol, which is a drug. I'm talking about nicotine, which is a drug. And especially I'm talking I'm talking about the illicit drugs on the market, especially the opioids and fentanyl. I remember working with a man a number of years ago, and he's having a conversation with his daughter, and she and he was concerned that she might get involved in marijuana. Marijuana was a big thing. Well, you compare marijuana with fentanyl. I mean, you just can't compare the two. But it all starts someplace. It all starts someplace. So he said he's had his daughter down one day, and he had a conversation with her. And he said, Now I want you to promise me that you will not take marijuana. You will not take marijuana knowingly and not experiment with it. Promise me you will not experiment with it. And she said, Dad, I'd be happy to promise you that. But dad, would you promise me something? He said, What's that you. She said, Dad, would you promise me that you'll stop smoking cigarettes? He came into the lunchroom one day, and he was sitting opposite me, and he told me the story himself, and he said it just shocked me. He said I said he'd been smoking for a number of years, many years. And he said I looked my daughter in the eyes. And I said, Yes, I will, because I love my daughter. And so I promised my daughter that I would stop smoking cigarettes. She promised me that she would not begin to smoke or experiment with marijuana. Beautiful, beautiful story. And I've taken since my since I've come back into a right relationship with Jesus many years ago, I had to make a decision on some of these things, and I made a decision that I would not take any of these things myself, because I saw it as a great threat to others. And if I'm playing with these kinds of things, and if I'm taking social drinks here and there, and a glass of wine and all these things, to me, it's setting an example. You have to set an example. You have to start someplace, because it's little by little, by little by little, and the next thing you know, a young person is going out and experimenting with something that they never should have experimented with in the first place. Whether they do that or not, they will not use my example as a reason and a rationale, because I used to play that game all the time. I found fault with other people who were professing Christians and justified my actions by the issues that I perceived in their lives. Was that right for me to do now, but I did that, and I know that's what others will be doing. And I don't want anybody to say grandpa or dad or Dave or David or whatever you want to call me why it's okay, because he takes a bottle of beer once in a while. He drinks a glass of wine once in a while. No, he does not. He smokes a cigarette. Wasn't. No, he does not, and no one will say that. So why am I saying all this? Because there's a demand, and the demand starts with little things, and pretty soon you have a demand in your country, and you have somebody coming in as a president or a government leader who says, Our neighbors are not treating us fairly because they are permitting things to come through their fences to us that's damaging our citizens. Our neighbors are not treating us fairly. There's the ideology that's coming to us from our neighbors. The two things that are real problematic for us now is there's an ideology that we are exporting through our fences or borders, and
there's also this drug traffic.
Ideology is a mindset. It's a way of thinking. Now there is emerging in America. Now there's emerging in America. There's emerging this, this idea that we are in an existential This is why I see it in America. Many people in America are seeing themselves as in an existential crisis. So what do you mean by that? It's not just these 74,000 people dying on a yearly basis. It's there's an ideology that's coming in that almost has consumed the United States of America. It has almost swallowed it up so that it would be irretrievably changed going into the future, and it's an ideology that would lead to the absolute decimation of America as it has existed since its founding, and there are people coming in, in a place of governance who see that as a great threat and a great danger, and they're going to do everything they possibly can to minimize and act in opposition to that danger. So therefore, you have a very aggressive treatment of neighbors that are perceived as feeding into this threat and participating in this threat. Now, the other thing that I would mention in this context, just sharing a little bit about this with you this morning for a few minutes, because there's a way of thinking about all of these things that is wholesome. There's another way of thinking about all these things, I think that is problematic. Now. I learned a long time ago that you can have something that's real or something imagined, real or imagined, whether it's real, okay, for example, whether it's real, that Canada is a threat to the United States of America right now in terms of its fences or borders, whether that's real or whether it's imagined. But I want to say it doesn't make any difference whether something is real or imagined in the way people react to it. I'll give you an example. I have many examples one day. A number of years ago, I was cutting grass and cutting a lawn in front of the little house over here, and Pat's mother was living in the little house. So I wonder what she was doing, because I saw her emerge from the front door of the little house and she had a glass in her hand. She had a glass in her hand, and there was milk, I think, you know, it turned out that there was milk in the glass. And the other hand, she had some cookies. And she came out of the front door of the house, and she went around towards the back of the house. And so I get off the lawn mower, and I went, you know, kind of chased her down a little and said, What are you doing? Oh, I'm giving the cookies and the milk to the little girl. Didn't you see her come out? She said. I said, No, what little girl? Well, she came into the house. The little girl came into the house, and I saw her, and being so generous, she got the milk and the cookies. The little girl, she said, went out and went around to the back of the house. So she was going to follow the little girl to give her the milk and the milk and the cookies. There was no little girl. It was a figment of her imagination because she was on medications, and she was seeing things that didn't exist because of certain medications that she was allergic to. And once we discovered that we were able to make sure that those medications were were changed. Now I use that as an example to say the situation was imagined. It wasn't real, but her actions would be as if it was real, because, to her, it was real. So we're dealing now with situation and circumstances where we have to stop thinking about just, well, no, this isn't right. Well, no, that isn't right. We have to deal with things and say there's a perception of something, and we need to address the perception, and we need to investigate to the fullest extent possible the truth as to the reality of this. But nevertheless, we have issues with our neighbors. There's a problem with our fences. Good fences make good neighbors. We have to examine our fences to make sure that it's okay, that everything's okay with our fences. Because whether it's real, the accusations or the idea of threat, whether it's real or imagined, the actions will be the same. We have to stop this thing. We have to bring this situation and circumstance to a halt. We have to restore our relationships to the point where we trust each other and are perceived to trust each other and where we have each other's interests high in our agenda, and are perceived to have the interests of one another. So that when I'll go back to the farm again, example, so that when we go away on a little couple of days of excursion, we'll say to our neighbors, I'm going away for a couple of days. Would you look after my chores while I'm away? Oh, yes, Frank, my dad's name, frost. Frank. No, probably be happy to look after your chores. Chores. Everything is where it was the last time I looked after them for you. Yes, okay, everything's the same. And you know where the feed for the chickens are. You know where the feed for the pigs are, right, all this kind of thing. Oh, yeah. How about you? You and Dorothy, have a wonderful time. Not often you get to go away, I'll just be happy to look after it for you. And Frank says, Now when you go away, you be sure to let me know, because I will do the same for you in return. Those are good neighbors. Good neighbors. They have each other. We have a history of good neighbors. We have done many things in the past together. We're at a very critical moment now where something is beginning to get loose, let loose out of a bottle. It's a very dangerous substance, and people don't know how dangerous this is. Once nationalism comes in, it's like we have this situation of offense. So let me close where I started with you this morning, because once things reach a certain point, it's very difficult to reel them back in and this is true with neighbors living on the Huron line or some other line. It's also true with neighboring countries, and it's not long before you have something happening, like you have in certain parts of Europe and with Russia and Ukraine, or you can name other places, a brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle. So we have brothers that are offended,
and we have contentions,
and it's just beginning to grow,
and we are turning compass. Even that should be friendly, just friendly, and for the sport itself, and we're allowing those to be turned into something else. Now, I could comment on the kind of leadership that exists in both of our countries, and I'm not going to do that, because it is what it is, and everybody has to make up their own mind about that caliber of leadership.
The point is we deal with what we have to deal with,
but we have to make sure that we do everything that we can to mitigate and to resolve and to enhance the relationship between neighbors. And the place we start and continue to work on is with our fences, because I guess you know my little topic of this, little short sharing with you is that good fences make good neighbors. You
our music this morning is from the Bill Gaither trio, and we open with who we have this moment. It's the album as the King is coming, and our concluding number, even so, Lord Jesus come the album because he lives. Amen.
