Suffering With Joy

Fences: Sitting, Straddling, or Using the Gate

April 29, 2010

Last week Roger and I drove to the North Texas area for the kick-off of my friend Lynn Baber’s book, Amazing Grays, Amazing Grace which is available on Amazon.  It was the official inauguration of Lynn’s Amazing Grays ministry, which is to call all members of the equine community to faithfulness to Jesus.  Lynn uses her experience as a horse trainer to point out relationship lessons we humans have with God.

It was a good week weather-wize, and Roger and I were able to take pictures outdoors in the bright sun.  The sky was a cloudless blue, the vegetation fresh green, and we caught the tail end of the Indian paintbrush’s fiery dance along the pasture edges.  We were a week too late for the bluebonnets, though.  Some were still left by the roadside, but we didn’t have a place to pull off and snap pictures, so that will have to wait for another time.  Lynn reminded us that it was Lady Bird Johnson who started the “Beautify America” campaign to sow wildflower seeds along the highways.  In the 45+ years since then it seems that more work is still to be done with all the new road construction and no wildflowers along some waysides we passed in Oklahoma and Missouri.  Nevertheless, it was a good time to go south before Texas heats up.

One of my favorite photos from the trip is this one taken in the Baber pastures.  As I was focusing with my long lens I thought about the fence between the black horse on one side and the donkey and horse on the other.  We can’t sit on the fence where our Faith is concerned.  We have to be either hot or cold.  If we are lukewarm, Jesus will vomit us out of His mouth. This is a really unappealing image for me and a big motivation to stay on the hot side.

Hot and cold are two sides of the same coin. Each means we have taken a firm stand for or against Jesus and we are fully engaged one way or the other.  But if we straddle the fence trying to appeal to each side, we are not focused on Jesus and not open to His love and what that brings. With our attention divided, sooner or later something big will come along and bump us off the fence and into the dust where we will most likely find we’ve ended up on the wrong side.  Think of the “jelly side down” rule – the peanut butter and jelly bread always falls jelly side down.

Fences have a good purpose – to keep things separate for a reason.  It’s a way of creating order out of what could become confusion or danger.  They are not built for sitting or straddling.

Another good thing about all fences is that they have gates, but we can’t walk through the gate from the cold side to the hot side if we don’t have our feet on the ground in the first place. These gates, in God’s divine mercy, are never locked.  Until we die we always have the opportunity to choose to walk through them from cold to hot if we discover ourselves on the wrong side of the fence.  To wait until the last minute, however, would be presumption.

Questions I ask myself considering this fence analogy are, in what ways am I sitting on the fence in relationship to God? If I am, what am I going to do about it?

Tags: Divine Mercy

2 Comments to Fences: Sitting, Straddling, or Using the Gate

1. 

   Good reflection. “Amazing Grays”… LOL! But hey, it sounds like it could be a good opportunity to minister to people involved with horses.

   Another way to look at the “hot/cold” references in Revelation would be to consider how cold water or hot water are enjoyable in their own ways. On a hot day, you could enjoy a swim in cool waters or slake your thirst with a cold drink. On the other hand, soaking in hot water can be very soothing, and who doesn’t enjoy a hot drink like cocoa, coffee, or tea? Any lukewarm water, however, is neither enjoyable to drink nor bathe/swim in. So some would say that it’s not that God is telling people in that biblical passage to make up their minds about being before or against Him; rather, He wants people to have qualities pleasing to Him rather than being distasteful to Him.

   But “straddling the fence” is certainly an undesirable thing to do for. Fences certainly aren’t made for sitting on, and being indecisive can sometimes prove to be much worse than actually settling on a course of action. I was speaking with a priest recently about discerning a vocation, and he pointed out that people who sit on the fence (i.e., will not make a decision either to pursue the priesthood/religious life) eventually get very uncomfortable. A decision will have to be made; you can’t just waffle around forever!

   Thanks for the post!

   Evan
Evan on May 2nd, 2010
2. 

   Thanks for expanding my understanding of this Biblical passage. And it’s true about vocations – a decision has to be made one way or the other, but some people take a long time deciding!
barb on June 19th, 2010