Breaking Boundaries May Break Us
In the summer of 1946, our family moved to then-tiny Kerrville, Texas, where we lived in a brand new house on Clay Street. To a seven-yearold like me, that little house seemed like a mansion. Actually, it would have stretched our new home to contain over 800 square feet.
Although the house was tiny, it did have a larger-than-usual yard. North of us lay several acres of vacant land, and Dad bought half a lot north of ours to make room for his always ambitious gardening.
Alas, four or five years later, when another family decided to build a home on that bare land beside ours, we discovered to our dismay that our fence and shrubbery were located about ten feet beyond our property’s legal boundary. Our surveyor had marked it wrong.
Dad faced a grueling task to move that lengthy fence and to get our bushes and flowers off the new neighbors’ land. By then my father was in his early forties, no longer the muscular, stalwart field hand he had been twenty years before that. I’ll never forget his cry of distress when he strained a back muscle while trying singlehanded to uproot and move a huge, mature cluster of pampas grass.
The damage Dad did to his torso curtailed his physical labor for weeks to come. Such is the price we pay when we cross established boundaries, even when we do it unwittingly. The resulting damage almost always takes a toll on us.
If you doubt that, ask any man who cheated on his wife, or dipped into his employer’s till, or borrowed patented methods or mechanisms. Breaking the rules almost always breaks us.
What happens to a diabetic who, unaware of her condition, ingests an inordinate amount of sugar? Exceeding the calorie limit—even if she doesn’t know it—can wipe her out. If you ever were pulled over for driving 20 or 30 miles over the speed limit, what did it cost you?
Boundary-breaking almost always costs us dearly. Whether we cross the lines of marital faithfulness or of financial honesty or of sexual decency, the price we pay for ignoring the limits often turns out to be a lot higher than we expected.
Over and over, the Bible warns us about “the wages of sin,” and defines the behavioral lines that will keep us from receiving them. We cross those lines at our own risk.
Gene Shelburne may be addressed at 3516 Carlton Dr., Amarillo, TX 79109 or at GeneShel@aol.com.
Get his books or magazines at www. christianappeal.com. His column appears weekly.