Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”…
“It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.”
Revelation 21: 5-6 (NIV)
It was the last big house we lived in as a child. It was beautiful; an old colonial style home with wide porches wrapping from the front all around both sides. As the family money got tighter, after that, the moves to new towns became more frequent and the houses became smaller and smaller—and less fun. That was my take on it anyway as a twelve-year-old, and on pace to grow up pretty fast from that point on.
A four-foot high, hand-laid, stone wall encircled the perimeter of the two acres on which that historic house sat in central Connecticut. As children, we didn’t venture out much past that stone wall, other than to school a few blocks away, church on Sunday, and when I caddied to earn money at a nearby country club. In addition to mowing two acres of grass in the summer, raking leaves off that acreage in the fall and shoveling snow from the lengthy drive from the garage to the street, in the winter, I endlessly practiced place-kicking field goals over a two-by-four board I had nailed between a tree and the studio standing alone from the house in the back yard.
And I always wondered what else was beyond that stone wall.
The stone wall faithfully oversaw all this activity throughout the year. Other than those few trips mentioned, we stayed isolated within its protection. I learned later that Miss Porter’s School for Girls—a noteworthy finishing school for girls such as Caroline Kennedy—was beyond that wall, only a few blocks away.
There was something though that stone wall had a hand in—helping that little boy to a place of a beginning belief in the existence of God. Long before he ever came to the altar or raised his hand or lowered his head in submission—that stone wall helped him to a place of assurance that there had to be a God watching over all of this, and him.
Long before any more formal introduction to God by those far smarter than he was, then and now—the stone wall guided him there. It happened as that little boy would look out over that stone wall guarding his home in central Connecticut and would wonder what dreams and hopes might lay beyond its protection. Then he would think about the stars, solar systems, galaxies and the universe he heard about in school, and then other galaxies that must be there, and wonder, what was beyond even them. He’d try his best to think beyond all of those to what he envisioned to be the very end of it all—where he would then build in his imagination a stone wall about four feet high—right there at the end of it all, as far out as he could envision.
But then, as you’ve probably already guessed, that little boy wondered what was on the other side of that stone wall that he built in his imagination. And it was there, in that moment, that he found God, and it began to make sense to him, not in his head—that may never come with his finite brain—but in his heart. And that assurance of a God—beyond the stone wall at his home there in Central Connecticut, and the stone walls in his life and imagination—who would always be there, began to give him peace and assurance. Someone bigger and greater than all he saw around him, someone who was in the beginning of things and at the end of the farthest reaches of his imagination—beyond the stone wall—was there to walk with him now, and through what would be the tough times of the days to come.
Like that little boy, we all have our walls. Some protect us. Some isolate us. And some hold us back from becoming all we were created to be. There are walls of rejection and guilt seemingly too wide to crawl beyond. Walls of a childhood which wasn’t all it should have been, or a career which is taking a different course. Walls of doubt, self-sorrow, disappointments and tragedies that seem too high to ever be able to scale. Walls of our own brokenness, and walls pretending that we’re not. Walls of striving endlessly to meet the expectations of all those around you.
We all have them. The important thing for us is to not only recognize that we do—but to be able to look past them and get beyond them. Like that little boy did. That’s when you find afresh and anew the God who is waiting to go with you, through whatever you will face, and into all He has planned for your life. What do you see beyond your walls? Our whole life yet to live is out there.
But here’s the best part, listen closely.
Not only is God waiting for us on the other side of whatever wall we’re trying to get beyond, He’s also on this side ready to boost us over to begin our journey into all we were meant to be.
All the way into eternity with Him.
On the other side of the wall.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2012. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
