The Final (or Possibly Second-to-Last) Frontier
We’re moving. Or, at least, we’re attempting to. So far we’ve made it a half mile down the road to my folks’ place. But at least it’s a step in the eastward direction we’re heading. We sold our home in November, packed nearly every earthly possession into storage, and squashed into my parents’ place.
Moving is hard, isn’t it? Deciding what material possessions are worth storing for $150 a month. Finding just the right house in a strange land. Saying goodbye to the people we love most. For some of us, the unknown is thrilling; for others, terrifying.
We’re faced with uncertainty every day, and we do one of three things with that elephant in the room:
- Elephant? What elephant?
- We see the elephant, and we cover its head with a cute doily and a silk tulip in a bud vase.
- We give it a nod and toss it a peanut, confident in the knowledge that we trust Someone so much bigger.
Nothing points a big neon arrow at uncertainty like a global pandemic. Or a move out of state. Or a long list of other trials, challenges, and changes.
For the majority of us who are prone to the doily method of dealing: is it possible to view uncertainty in a way that helps us conquer our fear of the unknown?
A friend shared these words from John O’Donohue that have helped me view the comfort of the familiar and the challenge of change in a new way:
At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier (emphasis mine).[1]
He goes on to say that facing a threshold elicits complex emotions. Don’t I know it. An impending move does that to a person. Despite my swings between envisioning a land of milk and honey and exhibiting anxious tics, I am a “pioneer” according to my daughter. I suppose the term is fitting, because I feel as if I’m making the journey in a wagon with creaky wheels and I’m low on hardtack.
To cross a threshold takes courage and a sense of trust, O’Donohue says. Of course, we know in whom we should trust. And if we’ve learned anything about crossing thresholds from the story of the Hebrew people, it’s this:
Placing our trust in the boundary lines we’ve determined doesn’t give us the courage needed to enter the promised land.
Over the past two years, as I’ve prepared for a retreat presentation on pilgrimage and written two children’s books thick with the themes of change and stewarding the lands where God leads us, I’ve spent extra time in the book of Deuteronomy.
The Hebrew people were commanded by God to leave Horeb, set out to the land of the Amorites, and take possession of it. God was giving it to them. But first, they wanted to see what the spies had to report. Even the spies said the land was good and brought back some fruit of the land to prove it.
As we know from reading Little House on the Prairie and watching reruns of Bonanza, a frontier—whether it’s the Wild West or simply the next stage in our lives—is the epitome of the unknown, even for those who trust the God of it. Because sometimes the unknown is less scary than what we do know.
Instead of crossing the threshold into the land God promised to them, the people rebelled and grumbled in their tents (kind of like we do on Facebook) and said:
“The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’”
Despite the Hebrew people knowing that the Lord was bigger than the Amorites or Anakites, and despite knowing he would go before them, would fight for them, and would carry them as a father carries his son, they still refused to trust him. The arrogance, the faithlessness, the fear! It all sounds outrageous.
Until we walk into the room with the elephant to straighten the doily and tuck a fresh silk tulip into the bud vase.
Then we realize that we, too, must answer the same questions put to God’s people in the wilderness:
Will we trust God in uncertainty? Will we courageously cross the next threshold?
Will we trust more in the safety of the boundary lines we’ve drawn, or will we, instead, see the unknown as the frontier of our loving Father and follow him wholeheartedly into it?
is a senior book editor and the author of the new Tree Street Kids series for kids 8-12 from Moody Publishers in Chicago. Books 1 and 2, Jack vs. the Tornado and The Hunt for Fang, release in April 2021.
Photograph © Vlad Bagacian, used with permission
[1] O’Donohue, John, To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 48.
