“But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”

Things work well at work, until they don’t work well or don’t work at all.  And, 99% of the time, if not every time, it is because of the decisions and actions of a person. There are errors made, which we all make and most can be gotten over, but there are actions taken that are harder to forgive and these are when someone crosses a boundary. It’s at these moments that we want to pull our hair out because we can see, right in front of us, things unraveling, getting messy and emotions peaking, all because one person decided to step outside their boundary.  Why are boundaries important? Well, imagine a swim meet competition with someone crossing swim lanes? Or, what happens when we decide to cross driving lines without warning or regard to the cars behind us, or the cars coming directly at us? There are boundaries for a reason and once we all know what they are, then we are better off staying within the boundary we have been given with any deviations being well-notified and agreed upon in advance.

As believers, we must accept that God has put boundaries on us. While God makes us free, He does not give us all-access no questions asked passes to what our world entails. God’s boundary on us is sin. We all do it, but He tells us clearly ahead of time what the boundaries look like and then we make our own choices about those boundaries. But, here’s the good part. Inside the boundaries we are closer to Him and this life can be fuller and more freeing than anything we can ever imagine. The other day I had the image of temptation being like standing on one side of a fence. The fence is not so tall that we can’t easily step over it. On the other side is something that looks so good, so inviting, so enticing that all we have to do is take one little step over and it is ours.  But, when we do our feet immediately sink into mud that wasn’t there when looking from the other side. And then we have another choice. Do we quickly pull our feet up and get back to the other side, catching our breath like we just escaped danger? Or, do we stay on the other side only to have our feet slowly sink deeper and deeper making our escape and return harder? And, this is why God sets the boundary for us in the first place.  And let me not end this without also reminding anyone who feels sunk beyond escape or return, to just reach up today and ask God for the pull of His forgiveness. He is right there, waiting to pull us out, clean us off, and gently return us to His side.

Reference: Genesis 2:16-17 (New Living Testament)