Fences

This guest post is from a talented writer named Melissa Merritt.  She is also my cousin!  Enjoy!

2 Corinthians 6:11-13 (The Message)

"Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life.  We didn't fence you in.  The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren't small, but you're living in a small way.  I'm speaking as plainly as I can with great affection.  Open up your lives.  Live openly and expressively."

This wide open spacious life...a life without fences.  We build fences when we plan, when we worry, when we become consumed with what to do with "our time," our goals, our needs, our sins.  We set boundaries for ourselves in the form of fences.  Thinking, if I can just do this or make it here, then...Sometimes we do it and we make it, we make it to the end of our fence.  Then what?  We are gratified for a moment to see the fence, the hard work it took to put it there, we run our fingers over it and feel the splinters, the wear and tear of storms and triumph.  We may take time to mend the fence that continues to crumble.  We may sit on top of it for awhile and rest...for a moment...then.  Then what? 

We begin to look beyond the fence, beyond our boundaries, and we begin to stir and wonder, what is beyond this fence?  So, we build another fence around the first one and life becomes an endless entrapment of fences and more fences.  We have closed ourselves in and are suffocated by the space we created.  We are small and begin to feel the smallness as the fences grow around us. 

What if we entered into this wide-open spacious life instead?  Instead of building more fences or mending the broken ones, why not let them all crumble?  What is left?  Us and God.  An infinite number of space and possibilities, leaving and dying to boundaries.  Allowing an awesome Father and Creator who has a plan and a mind that we cannot begin to comprehend lead us into His spacious, open world.  Living in the moment of never being 100% sure of where we are going or what is next in life, but being free in the truth that with God's amazing plan, we may never stumble over a fence again.  I will thank God every time I encounter a dilapidated fence!


Note about the author:  Melissa is a Godly woman, a wife and mother of two adorable girls.  She is also a member of Newspring Church in Anderson, SC and a writer who contributes content to their website.