Years ago travel from the United States into Mexico or Canada was a breezy affair. Proclaim U.S. citizenship, and we were waved on to step foot in a foreign country, free to travel as we pleased until we returned.
Then 9/11 happened, and all that changed. The borders became divisive gouges that we could not pass without our passport in hand.
Take Derby Line, Vermont. This city straddles the U.S./Canadian border along with her sister city, Stanstead, Quebec. Before 9/11, residents freely wandered back and forth, often working in one country and eating their meals in another. Then came the separation. People’s lives were drastically changed. Now, in places, passports must be tendered just to cross the street. The library in Derby Line intentionally straddles the international boundary. Here, a person can freely peruse books in both countries, as long as they exit the side they entered on.
In our daily lives, we set up the same sorts of borders. We claim this as ours, draw lines others may not cross, and make it clear what we are and are not willing to do.
Step into our library, and our friends are welcome to roam freely, but we expect them to walk back out the same door, because all the rest of the borders are off limits. Stay out. Keep away. Back to your own life, or you will break the rules we’ve set up for our borders.
That’s not good enough for God. He wants us to step beyond our borders, to head abroad, to make a difference in a wider world than the one we currently occupy.
Here are three examples of how we can step beyond our borders for Christ:
Border Crossing #1 –
1 John 4:8 tells us that “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
So, Border #1 is the border of love. We have to show love to the unlovable, or we are building a wall that surpasses even the great Berlin Wall of the old divided Germany. Then, how will people come to Christ, if they cannot even see our example unto them?
Border Crossing #2 –
1 Peter 3:18 reminds us that “…Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”
Border #2 is to be prepared to endure discomfort in order that others might find Christ. Staying in our comfort zone doesn’t win many people for the Lord.
Border Crossing #3 –
John 3:16 is the biggie, because it comes directly from God’s example: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Border #3 stretches us to give up everything for the work of Christ. If we hold anything as so important that we cannot offer it to the Lord, our borders have become immutable, and even the love of Christ cannot get across.
Just as in Derby Line, Vermont, we cannot exclude people from our little world without impacting their everyday lives. We must find a way to cast the borders wide and let Christ’s love flow to everyone who wanders by.
The love of Christ transcends borders, but only if we let it.
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Code: FGO.F.06.14b.vp