MAKE NEW WAYS BUT KEEP THE OLD

As I grow I don’t lose the need for my foundation; I need it even more to hold me and support me as I grow.  Independence is often viewed as moving off my foundation and going off on my own, to build my own life.  Without the foundation that was laid in my growing up years I will stumble and fall.  We are quick these days to see foundations as stumbling blocks to be done away with so we can be who we are meant to be rather than a cornerstone that actually helps us become who we were meant to be.  The new growth is fresh and exciting but it is the old growth that strengthens and feeds that new growth.

People are too quick to want to grow up and get out on their own.  It has not strengthened our culture but has weakened it.  Intergenerational tribes and families are a thing of the past in our highly mobile lifestyle.  My default family has always been the Waltons.  They were a three generational home who in their dependence upon one another actually made them strongly independent in themselves as individuals.

In my thinking that is a good goal for our homes and our churches.  Discarding the “old folks” and the old ways is like clear cutting land.  It destroys the soil that has been worked and matured and creates a strong foundation and support for new growth.

The attack on tradition and family was a strategic battle plan for the enemy of God and mankind.  It weakened the very fabric of our culture.  We are seeing the fruit of these unintended consequences in today’s political and world wide chaos.  Unfortunately we can’t turn back time.  But I think we can recognize the problem and make better choices. We need to make the old ways and the new ways compatible with one another, not eliminate the old ways to make way for the new ways.  Both are needed to create wholeness.