Boundaries

Life has boundaries! I remember when I was a child growing up in the hills of Belmont county, Ohio, that beside our home there was a man who kept bees for honey. I can recall a number of times going to the back of our property and peering over the fence to look at the white boxes that housed the chaos of noisily buzzing creatures. I don’t remember if it was fear that motivated us or, perhaps, respect, but we never crossed the fence to go near the bees.

Oddly enough, however, the bees had no problem coming to us. I can’t count the number of times, while running through the yard playing, that I stepped on a bee and got stung. I guess that is how we found out I was allergic to them. Nonetheless, they had broken the boundary and had entered our space. Yet, I was the one who paid the price.

I think sin starts that way. It doesn’t start when we cross a boundary. It starts when we are visited by temptation. Adam and Eve didn’t have to go to Satan, he came to them. Thus, it is not only important for us not to cross the boundary, but to protect it from intruders as well. I am reminded of Ezekiel’s charge as a watchman, giving warning to God’s people (3, 33). “But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.”