When I’m on the road (car-bike-foot), especially if conditions are not the best, a prayer comes to mind from the beginning of Psalm 16: Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.
Several lines down I find a favorite few verses: Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Which contrasts with a line from Barbara Streisand: I don’t want much – I just want more! “More” is a vital word in our society. It drives our economy to grow. “More” motivates ball clubs who don’t go as far as they had hoped in the play-offs, to make improvements. “More” directs us to take another course or seek a more profitable opportunity.
But now and then the boundary lines of life pop up in front of us. Some boundaries that we cannot or should not cross. How often do headlines bring shame to a public figure who reached across a red line for more. How often does the frustration of boundaries, seemingly unfair, become an excuse. A friend feels her parents favored her sister in how property was divided. Forty years later the resentment remains.
As I look back on the journey so far, the boundary lines recalled seem to include guardrails on the road. Sometimes as detour signs. Thinking back on seemingly losing seasons and road closings and U-turns, disturbing as some were at the time, I can be genuinely glad for those boundaries that helped to guide me. To see new roads I would not have been looking for. And to lead to where I am now.
The more I can be content with the boundaries – what I’ve been given as well as with limits and rejections, weaknesses as well as strengths, the better I can come to boundaries in the road ahead, including the end of the earthly road. And the more I can be of use to those facing their boundaries. Even with that most unwanted and seemingly ill-timed final one.
If I can see the grace I’ve received, the more I can see “enough” where I should. The more I can thankfully look beyond earthly boundaries, to the hope at the end of the psalm:
My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand
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