'Here be dragons'

My father-in-law is the new guy in town, having blown in from Michigan last October.

As I was driving today, it dawned on me that the area looks a lot different to him than to me. I remember what it was like when I first settled in Glenside, Pa., from Cape Cod, Mass., to attend the local seminary. At first, the seminary and the nearby college where I stayed anchored the borders of my universe. The road beyond those two points trailed off like a dot-dot-dot at the end of an incomplete sentence. Outside of that was “Here be dragons.”

Gradually I ventured out to a mall. (Now I was feeling like a man-about-town!) I got braver still and discovered more than one way to reach a particular venue. (Now I was positively cosmopolitan!) Over time I constructed a mental map of the vicinity, filling in the blank spaces little by little until one part of the map touched another—like separately developed sections of a hundred-piece puzzle one is working on that finally meet. Most gratifying.

It is interesting that none of us actually sees a place the same way as another person does, though the physical features would cast an identical image on the silver crystals of a photographic film: same tree, same fountain, same curve in the road. So much of how we perceive depends on other factors.

And so much of what we learn about the world depends on our willingly testing its boundaries, on daring to venture out past conventional safety—into the dot-dot-dot. It depends on courage, in a word.

As for God, who knows the “boundaries” of His power? His love? Who has ventured out on Him enough to push the limits of the known world, and come to the end of His promise that “all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) and “nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37)? The psalmist wrote, “My mouth shall tell of your righteousness and your salvation all the day, for I do not know their limits” (Psalm 71:15, NKJV).

While walking through a very large cemetery, I spotted a stranger at some distance who had his face to a mausoleum wall and was wailing loudly. I decided to make a wide berth around him. (“Give him his privacy,” I told myself). But the Spirit seemed to bid me otherwise. I said, “OK, I’ll go if you give me something to say.” (“Aha,” I thought, “If God gives me nothing to say in the next 10 seconds I’m off the hook.”) He gave me nothing to say, but the inner mandate did not lessen.

By feet that seemed other than mine, I approached the man from behind—still with nothing—and placed my hand on his back and gently rubbed it. He turned slightly and said, “My mother.” I asked, “Do you know Jesus?” No answer. I prayed (a lame and unconvincing prayer), and then walked away, feeling lighter than air.

There was a boundary broken.

Another time, in conversation with my intellectual next-door neighbor, the name Gabriel García Márquez was invoked, and I pretended to know something about him. Later, in my house, I was under great conviction about the pretense. I wanted to come clean. But see, I had never done that kind of thing before. (“Here be dragons.”) I screwed up my courage, walked across the driveway, knocked on the door, and said, “Barbara, I need to tell you. The truth is I don’t know diddlysquat about Gabriel García Márquez.”

The sky did not fall. There was another boundary broken.

Like a glossy brochure of the Poconos urging exploration, Scripture exhorts: “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). The psalmist, likewise adventurously minded, wrote, “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).

When we dare to go further in God than before, we learn more of His ways and of His kindness and His ability to rescue. But the surprise is that in learning more of Him we learn more of ourselves and how we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.