Boundaries

Psalm 16 speaks to us of boundaries. Those who trust in the Lord are protected by God. The Lord puts a boundary between them and evil doers. And those who live within the boundaries God has established are happy. And the evangelist who wrote 1 Peter agrees: Those who have faith have the inheritance of new and eternal life, protected by God. The Lord has placed a boundary line between us and death through the resurrection of Jesus.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, ⁷ so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1: 3-9 NRSV)

In the beginning God created. That’s what the scriptures say. And with everything else God created, the Lord created boundaries. He placed a boundary between the heavens and the earth. There is a boundary between the oceans and the dry land. He separated the light from the dark and day from night. Those are boundaries. And he set boundaries for human beings as well.

God told Adam and Eve to go and populate the earth, to increase in number, and have dominion over all things on earth. But God still set boundaries. God said of all the wonderful trees in the garden Adam and Eve could eat freely. “Except,” God said, “do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That’s a boundary.

Maybe we learned it from God, but we set boundaries, too. We set boundaries between states, and nations. We build walls between ourselves and our neighbors. And sometimes we even build walls between ourselves and God. But that’s another sermon.

We also set boundaries for our children. When they are very young we tell them where they can play. “Don’t go across the street.” Or, “Don’t go off the block.” On occasion we tell them who they can play with and who they need to stay away from.

When they grow up we set boundaries about study time and leisure. We set a curfew time and a lights out time. Human begins live inside boundaries and we set boundaries for ourselves and for others.

We often think of boundaries as bad things. Boundaries hold us back, contain us, restrict us. But boundaries are good things.

They tell us how far we can go and they protect us from others who may want to violate our space. And the boundaries God has established are good for us, too. When we stay within the boundaries we live at peace with ourselves and with God. Most of the time we can say with the Psalmist, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.”

And the writer of 1 Peter agrees. The evangelist says that those who believe in the resurrection of Christ, those who accept its promise, have received hope of new life—even in the face of death. Our new life is kept for us, unfading, incorruptible, and undefiled according to the grace and mercy of God.