Perspective on Boundaries

“. . . surely I have a delightful inheritance.”  Psalm 16:6

Let’s imagine that you have inherited a piece of land.  The court has notified you that a thousand acres in Texas will be yours.

The paperwork takes awhile but eventually comes through, and you are given the address.  With anticipation you board a plane for Texas, rent a car, and with the help of GPS start driving toward your property.

It may be a toxic waste dump or some prime real estate on the edge of an expanding community.  All you know is you’ve never owned a thousand acres of Texas land before in your life.  How bad can it be?

You exit the main highway onto a smaller highway.  You turn off the smaller highway down a dirt road.  The GPS tells you to just keep on going.  Eventually you arrive at a piece of land that, well, doesn’t exactly stir warm feelings in your heart.

The problem is one of perspective.  You’re a city dweller, looking at an endless stretch of reddish-brown sand with a wobbly, barbed wire fence.  It’s just not very appealing.  All you can think about is what isn’t there.  You don’t see what is there.

An oil man might see a prime area for drilling.  A guy who works in gas or mineral deposits might suspect there’s value below.  Someone who knows cattle or farming might tell you there’s good potential for a successful operation.   They might see something you don’t see.

My favorite story about land and perspective comes from the northern part of England.  A man inherited a defunct coal mine. As far as he was concerned, it was a white elephant.  He had to pay taxes on it because he owned it.  But it wasn’t going to produce any coal.  He couldn’t build on it, because it was a big hole.  And filling the hole would be absurdly expensive.

He was stuck with this unusable piece of land that cost him in taxes every year.

One day a friend with a different set of eyes joined him on the property.  After looking and thinking for a while, the man shook his hand and said, “Congratulations.  You own the single most valuable piece of property in this community.”

“Look,” the owner retorted, “I know you’re a salesman, but don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious,” the friend replied.  “What is the number one issue the local council is facing right now?”

“The only thing I’ve heard talk of is the trash disposal problem.”

“Right.  They are paying an exorbitant sum to haul trash from here to dispose of it, because there’s no local option.   This hole in the ground is the next county landfill.   As I said, you own the most valuable piece of property in the community.”

It was still a hole in the ground.  But now it was reframed, and the man saw his inheritance through a different grid.

We are so quick to curse our inheritance as a useless hole in the ground because we can’t see what to do with it.  We know what we’d do if we had that piece over there or this piece over here.   But the piece I have?  A piece of junk.  And we curse and revile it.

David says that’s not really the best move.  “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” Psalm 16:6

I don’t know when he wrote that.  He had some pretty rough years in more than one season of life.  Did he say that when Saul was trying to kill him?  Could he say that when Absalom was rebelling?  Could he still say that when Joab was being a traitor again?  Somewhere along the way, David decided that the boundary lines had fallen to him in pleasant places.

Again, it’s a matter of perspective.  And I remind you that however brutal your experiences have been, everything in your life was Father-filtered.  Everything.  He knew what was coming.  He could’ve stopped it.  He could’ve changed it. He could’ve redirected it 10,000 different ways.  And if He didn’t, He had a good reason.  Like Job we need to stand on the ash heap of our lives and declare with defiance, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him . . .” Job 13:15

Spirit, I bless you to reframe that big empty hole you inherited and currently have no use for.  As you look at your life with an honest view of the pain, the cost, the limitations, I bless you to see a Father who did not make a mistake with your inheritance.

He knows what He is doing.  And He has matched you – your design, your essence, the package that is you – with your inheritance.  He doesn’t put a sailor or fisherman in the middle of the desert.  He doesn’t put a lumberjack north of the Arctic Circle.  Even if what you’ve been given looks like a hole in the ground today, the inheritance God has for you is a good fit with His design of you.  I bless you with a relentless trust and a fierce, defiant faith in His choice.

May you stare the devil down and refuse to curse the inheritance the Lord gave you.   I bless you with the resolve that someday, somewhere, somehow you will see the beauty in this thousand acres of nothingness and know why your Father calls it delightful.  I bless you in Jesus’ name.

Copyright by Arthur Burk with Margaret Lehman
August 2020
All Scripture is from NIV unless noted.

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