Boundaries not only keep things out, they also enclose a safe place to live.
The One who designed us “in the beginning” offers to us the guidelines that will keep us safe in a dangerous world. And prepare us to live, as was originally intended, life eternal.
She held the syringe lovingly poised above her arm. The most important thing to her was the oblivion that the needle offered. Life was more fearful to her than death.
She plunged the needle beneath her skin and released the poison. She lay on the floor among used needles and her life spiraled away from her.
When the First Responders arrived, she was seconds away from death’s door.
At some point in her young life she had refused God’s boundaries. The restrictions seemed to keep pleasure away from her. The Rules of the Bible seemed to her and thousands of others, as too strict, too arbitrary. They prevented her from experiencing the pleasures of the world.
But, the Boundaries of God’s Law express the Love that He has for His creation.
When we take them as The Way to Abundant Life, we are able to respond to God’s love.
Commandments 1 – 4 tell us the way to respond to God, because of Who He is. They spell out the relationship He wants to have with us, and place boundaries for our response to Him.
My Loyalty to God puts me in the best possible circumstances to become more like Him.
Commandments 5 – 9 show us the best way to live in a community of families. Respect their boundaries. In return, they recognize my rights and boundaries.
My Life in concert with these community rules puts me in the best possible circumstances to invite others to learn more about God’s way.
Commandment 10 guides us to a contented life despite the differences in the abundance of blessings between them and me. I am not to question the way that God blesses others in comparison with what I have.
Some are entrusted with One talent. Others with more.
But, it’s not about the quantity of the gifts.
It IS about how I use what God has placed in my care.
Envy is a distrust of God.
Envy is the first step toward murder.
Envy will kill a friendship, which destroys my influence and witness for God.
My life of contentment puts me in the best possible circumstances to attract others to God’s Way.
The only things that are kept away from me as I live within the boundaries of God’s Law, are the attractions of Satan’s deceptions.
Jesus came that we might have life and live more abundantly.
He did not abolish or even alter the Law – not even as much as a crossing of a t or dotting of an i.
He provides the way to live in harmony and obedience to the Law. He IS the Way.
Life with Jesus takes us finally to be His neighbors in the New Jerusalem.
He promised that He is preparing places for each of us.
He promised that He will come again to rescue us from a doomed world of sin.
And there we shall ever be with the Lord.
Living within the boundaries of the Law of Love.
PS
The young lady in the illustration was revived and taken to the hospital.
This is the twelfth and final (for now) message in this series on the 10 Commandments.
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