All of us know what fences are. We’ve put them around our homes, we’ve built them to keep livestock in, and we’ve formed property lines with them. We live in a world full of fences. Daily we face barriers between rich and poor, conservative and liberal, men and women, people of color and people without color, between clergy and the laity, between one denomination and another, and the list could go on and on. Part of the calling as Christians is that we act the roll of a wrecking crew, a demolition team if you so will. Christ sends us to tear down fences and to undermine walls and remove high barriers.
Many fences are lovely antiques whose owners value them dearly. They have been handed down for generations in the family. Some walls are strongly built, heavily guarded, and defended at all cost. We are told that if they fall the whole country will fall with it. Some of these walls are adorned with our own achievements, titles, favorite objects, attitudes and bias.
These walls cause many, including myself, to grow weary, the glazed look during a message, the whispering, the wisecracks, the same excuses, and reasons. I know what she’s going to say, or there he goes again, or that’s the same old thing. There are days when we are tired and fed up with taking walls down brick by brick only to have someone else start mortering them back together. Jesus Christ, Himself, began the demolition. With His own body. He experienced the walls dividing rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, bond and free. God is asking us to do the same. As we tear down we are building up. The bricks we pull down go into building something else. One day all people will walk freely among one another. There will be no walls. Scripture states, “Do not grow weary of well doing. For the Kingdom of God, which has no fences, is coming.” Let each of us destroy a fence and build the Body of Christ up in unity and oneness of purpose.
Pastor Blaine Pritchett
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