Fenced In and Still Content

My backyard is finally fenced in.

If you assume I say that with some sense of relief, you’d be wrong.

When we moved here eight years ago, the vista from my back porch stretched over a mile. It led my gaze across rolling pastures to the coastal mountain range beyond. I used to watch the mist wending its way toward my house through the rise and fall of the landscape. But no more. Now the view stops where a line of wooden slats marks my property line. And what do my wondering eyes have to see these days? Only what belongs to me. And above the fence? A line of rooftops that shrink the size of the sky.

For a time, my backyard acted as my front porch. From there I watched the landscape change as house after house popped up in a new development. Then, as we knew what must eventually happen, someone bought the lot directly behind us. For a few pleasant weeks, we chatted with our new neighbors over the low wall that acted as our only dividing line. Until the inevitable privacy fence went up between us.

Now I sigh at the blank wall that marks the edge of my shrunken world and wonder how I’ll ever get used to my new limitations.

A Fenced in Life

But isn’t life like that? Some days, our horizons stretch out to infinity. The next day we feel fenced in and constrained. At times, our possibilities seem endless, then they narrow into nothingness. Life presents us with both overflowing abundance and devastating need. Not necessarily because of something we’ve done or not done. Just because.

Jesus prepared his disciples to continue spreading the Gospel in times of either hardship or ease. In Mark 6:8–9, for example, he wouldn’t let them bring either bag or bread or money as they went. Yet in Luke 22:35–36, he had them load up for the journey with not only money but a sword.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, said his experience with the Lord trained him to be content no matter which way the wind was blowing. “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound,” he wrote in chapter four. “Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.” He concluded he could do all things—the easy or the hard, with a rich supply or with nothing in his pocket—through the Messiah who strengthened him while remaining content and confident. (Philippians 4:11–13)

In Abundance or Need

And, as King David’s friend Jonathon noted, “nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6). So, though I look on fewer things these days, though I suffer need in day-dream-worthy views, there’s nothing to keep me from being abundantly content in what God’s given me to focus on closer to home.

Now, granted, being fenced in from scenery doesn’t rate very high on the tribulation scale, but I think the essence is still true. We all find ourselves not being able to do things we used to be able to do, go places we can no longer go, to find opportunities that were once offered in abundance. Nevertheless, with the spirit of Messiah strengthening us, we can continue to rejoice because he ever dwells within us. In that, we can be content.

Whether the view from our porch has us dreaming of endless possibilities or makes us feel fenced in, contentment is a learned response. It comes from reminding ourselves that the one who supplies all we need also promises to complete the good work he has begun in us. That the one who “turns rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground” also “turns a wilderness into pools of water, and dry land into watersprings” (Psalm 107:33–35).

We may not know how long our current situation will keep us hemmed in, but we can trust the one who reigns over fences. He alone can turn the barriers around us into gateways of new opportunities.