Fences, Freedom, and a Risky Proposition

Love

Grace

Mercy

Forgiveness

are risky propositions.

They are ideas and mores that do not like to be confined.  By their very nature, they must be free from constraint.

Yet, we like to have boundaries and limits in life.  They make us feel secure.  The fences keep us safe from that which is outside that may attempt to break in, and they keep us secure from that which is within the limits testing what is outside.  We believe that the boundaries help us understand what is right and what is true.  We feel as though they give us parameters within which life seems to make sense. 

If we are honest, the limits do indeed provide such a sense of security for us.  There is nothing implicitly wrong with these limits.  The problem with these barriers is when they become immovable and impermeable, especially to our sense of humanity.

Love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness are boundless.  They fly in the face of our need for boundaries.  They are dangerous because they demand of us something that seems to go against our very nature.  However, they are the very things toward which we are called.  This may be what frightens us the most.

Love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness ask us to step out of our comfort zone and into a life with fewer boundaries.  They becon us into unfamiliar and dangerous territory where uncertainty tends to dwell.  A life that is characterized by love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness is a life of courage.  It is a life that is lived free of false parameters and artificial constraints.

This kind of life is a life of risk and conviction.

A life of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness is incarnation.