A Limiting God

Setting boundaries… “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness… And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’” The forming of the earth was a process of setting boundaries. Of giving the light and the dark, the land and the waters, a place of their own.


Setting boundaries seems to be a theme that characterizes God’s sovereignty in this world. Isaiah write:
“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of their hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (40:12)

Psalm 148: 3-6 states, “Praise the Lord, sun and moon; praise the Lord, you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for the Lord commanded and they were created. The Lord established them forever and ever; the Lord fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.”


We pushed against those boundaries over and over in our Wilderness and Faith Class. So many of the issues in our world seem to be caused by our own lack of understanding of boundaries. Our desire to live beyond our means, beyond our limits. God seemed to know this would be our weakness. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve transgressed the only limits God set for them. We often speak of this as trying to be like God…

In our evangelical world, we speak regularly of being created in the image of God, the imago dei. It is a vital concept. One that reminds us of who we are. Yet so often, we forget to apply this concept to all of humanity. As we study the wilderness, we are reminded of the people who were driven from the land because we did not consider them equal in the eyes of God. We live in a country that continues to consume more and more, refusing to live within the limits of our world’s natural resources. In doing so, we refuse to see that others created in the image of God are suffering because of our greed. We have difficulty imaging a world in which all people are seen in the image of God.

Boundaries… key to raising children, living a holy life, living in community… We are to live into the boundaries God has set for us, including the limits of our resources, and to create communities that help us to live into those boundaries.