When you reflect on your immediate past, what do you think? I wonder how many of us can look back at the past decade and think, "Wow! This is as good as it gets!" For the past dozen years, I have been privileged to live and work in Williamsburg, Virginia. I have lived here longer than I have ever lived anywhere in my life. You see, I am a "PK" [preacher's kid] and it was usually "three years and a cloud of dust!" One would think that I would have learned my lesson about preaching, but I am in "my own" forty-fifth year of preaching.
As I drive to my study each morning (a ten mile jaunt), I have the blessed privilege of arriving here several different ways, but without doubt the best way is detouring through "colonial" Williamsburg. This morning I took the detour! Let me tell you about it!
Within five minutes (that's about as long as it takes to take the "detour") I witnessed sleepy-eyed students from the College of William and Mary making their way to that early morning lecture. At the same time, joggers came by on their normal morning routine as they "stay in shape!" As I made the turn onto Boundary Street there was a man power-washing the sidewalks in "colonial" Wiliamsburg. "Power-washing" in the 18th century? Is that not a bit peculiar?
Rounding the corner at Francis Street one knows that he is returning to "a different age!" Historic interpreters, dressed as their forerunners were, are making their way to jobs (gun- making, gardening, serving, and carriage driving) that will allow modern thought take a backseat to historical perspective. Is there anywhere else that one can see beautifully decorated tour buses and ducks drinking from a puddle leftover from last night's storm...all within two minutes? Is there any other place where one can see fifty elementary students dressed in shorts and T-shirts eagerly awaiting someone to step out in colonial garb to tell them "how it was back then?" Three minutes later (if you get caught by a traffic light) be ordering an iced tea from the "golden arches?"
That's what it is like for me to "take the detour" to work each morning! What a community this is!
One more thing. This is like every other village in the country in that we have those who have little good to say about "our town!" They are consumed with modernization, new housing, more traffic, and signs that don't quite meet the specifications. Their disgruntled words can be read each Wednesday and Saturday in our local newspaper (The Virginia Gazette) on the last page called, "The Last Word!" They probably feel better letting others know that they are not happy, so that's all right! The rest of us get a good laugh out of those things that others seem to think will destroy the universe if they are not halted...and halted NOW!
For more than twelve years I have been blessed to live and minister in "our town!" I love it!
I hope you can come by and "take the detour!"
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