I spent the winter of my 18 year old self mostly in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario Canada, quite close to the Algonquin Park. It was an incredible coming-of-age experience and an adventure I still treasure deeply.

One of the new freedoms I found – was the chance to purchase alcohol for the first time in my life. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but at that time the province of Quebec had a legal drinking minimum age of 18.

One weekend, as winter drew near its end, I got to spend a couple days with some young men in a cabin just outside of the beautiful Montreal. They had no electricity in that cabin. By candlelight and oil lamps we drank red wine, ate cheese and baguettes, and played Risk late into the night.

Weed was also plentiful that season. I was young and insatiably curious, so I eagerly watched the hippies roll joints and the ritualized communal nature of partaking. It was always for sharing, and almost religious in how it was performed.

One spring evening, possibly my last weekend there, we sat around the campfire strumming the guitar and watching the slow sunset. As the marijuana rites commenced, a Canadian friend asked if it was religion that kept me from partaking. I told him it was more of a personal nature, and we both agreed that God created weed, and there is nothing inherently wrong with its use.

You see, I had already experienced so much that winter which was intrinsic to the life of someone in Ontario Canada. Running a sugar bush, swimming in a half frozen lake, 5 pin bowling, and hearing the spine chilling howl of a timber wolf. My friend simply wanted me to have the full experience.

I didn’t fully understand why, but I believed it would be wrong for me. I think I was beginning to understand that personal responsibility did NOT mean policing others behavior, but instead it was living and walking with what I have been given. In any case, I did not experience marijuana at that time.

Less than two weeks later, having returned to Ohio and getting ready for summer employment with a union, I was surprised with a drug screen. There was no campfire, no friends, and no safety in numbers in that sterile doctors office. It was just me signing forms and there to provide a sample to find out if I was lying about drug use.

It was an important lesson for me.

We each must give account of our own choices.

The multitude of voices and opinions in our lives will not be there at the accounting.

How glorious, how precious, is the One who took that accounting in my place, and who we remember this Holy week.