“The Cows are Out!”

 

“You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”

—Psalm 139:5

“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

—Psalm 16:6

Usually the call came from my dad, frantically yelling into the house, “The cows are out!” That meant everyone had to jump into action and move out into the backyard, or road, or wherever the family herd had meandered.

Cows do not seem to have the intelligence that you would expect from animals that produce so much of our food. So, they quite frequently get themselves into serious trouble.

The cows, when out of the barn, or a fenced in area, have to be corralled and driven back where they belong. If the barn door gets accidently left open, or the gate gets broken down by weather or struck by a piece of farm equipment, the animals take that as an invitation to explore a world they have only observed from afar.

On the several farms my family members own, stray cows have been known to peer into house windows—even licking them repeatedly. They will stand ankle deep in freshly seeded lawns or flower gardens. And yes, they have even ended up in the family swimming pool.

Cows are curious creatures, and sometimes they just want to try new adventures. Sometimes it seems that they believe the grass might truly be greener and taste sweeter outside the fenced-in meadow.

Truthfully, in all too many cases, we’re not unlike those cows. Sometimes we just wander off. For no apparent reason we take advantage of an open gate and launch off into someplace we really shouldn’t go. We just drift away from the safety of God’s best place for us. We, like the cows, don’t see the warning signs—like speeding traffic or a pool of water eight feet deep.

How many times do we get dissatisfied with certain aspects of our own lives and take it upon ourselves to explore new vistas, even sinful ones we know will lead us down the wrong path. Discontent can provoke us to move into dangerous territory.

How do we avoid getting “outside” the boundary lines that God has assigned to us?

First of all, we need to stay close to our Heavenly Guardian. He will remind us, if we ask, that we are getting too near unhealthy and ungodly associations, temptations, or influences.

Secondly, we need to very insistently and very carefully watch out for ourselves. Proverbs 4 instructs us to guard instruction, guard our hearts, and pay close attention to our paths. We do this by staying close to God’s Word, and by remaining vigilant against the suggestions of our culture and our enemy, Satan, who 1 Peter 5:8 tells us:

“…prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

We should gratefully submit to the instructions of God’s Word, to His known will for us, and we should consistently trust His grace when we seem penned-in to some place where we would rather not live.

If we belong to Christ, when we do stray we can be assured that He diligently calls out His heavenly crew of angels to get us back inside the fence of His will. But, how much better for us and for our witness to the watching world, if we stay out of the places where we don’t belong—places of ruin that we can certainly avoid!