God’s Boundary Stones

We are still fallen creatures, so God provided markers around every individual’s life that would bring glory to Him if kept.

[This article first appeared in the Stream.org and is reprinted with permission.]

In the digital age, we rarely hear about boundary stones anymore.

They are simple stone blocks or stacked stones marked or engraved to define a property’s boundary. Historically, they have held immense importance. For thousands of years, they signified ownership or stewardship of the land they marked out. They also fixed regional boundaries and the borders of empires. Moving a boundary stone was always considered to be stealing, an act that carried severe penalties.

We first hear about them in Genesis 23:10, Deuteronomy 19:14, and arguably the oldest book in the Bible, Job, in 24:2. There are many other references in Scripture. Boundary stones took various forms in the ancient world, from unassuming carved stone blocks to sculptured obelisks or extraordinarily ornate markers carved using polished stones or material that described land grants or historical events. Some were considered sacred.

My first encounter with boundary stones was in northern Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. Some of the still-existing boundary stones were placed by a young surveyor and mapmaker named George Washington.

In 1749, at only seventeen years old, the future president secured an appointment to survey and map large parts of Virginia, then the western frontiers of the Shenandoah Valley and later the Allegheny Mountains and Ohio frontiers. Later, while serving as a junior officer in the French and Indian War, he gained prominence by using his extensive knowledge of the frontiers and mapmaking skills.

Washington (to my mind, the greatest American in an age of greatness) was God’s man. He was a lifelong student of Scripture and a man of prayer. (You can still see his prayer kneeler at his Mount Vernon home, where he often prayed for an hour or more at a time every day.)

He certainly would be aware of the frequent allusion to boundary stones to illustrate one’s spiritual state. The most-cited verse may be Proverbs 22:28, which admonishes, “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

It’s always dangerous to draft or credit an unstated idea or thought to someone long dead. But I’ve wondered if Washington’s background as a surveyor is how he recognized and observed the spiritual boundary stones and employed them during his extraordinary and disciplined life as a surveyor, farmer, soldier, general, president of the United States, and faithful believer.

He wrote out many of his prayers and had various journals. One was for morning and evening prayers for each day of the week. Here is part of one Sunday prayer Washington wrote:

I acknowledge and confess my guilt, in the weak and imperfect performance of the duties of this day. I have called on thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins, but so coldly and carelessly, that my prayers are[sic] become my sin and stand in need of pardon. I have heard thy holy Word, but with such deadness of Spirit that I have been an unprofitable and forgetful hearer, so that, O Lord, tho’ I have done thy work, yet it hath been so negligently that I may rather expect a curse than a blessing from thee.

That’s a brutally honest lament — he stepped outside of God’s boundary stones.

God’s Boundary Stones

Knowing that boundary stones indicate both a property’s exact position and the titleholder raises a spiritual question: Do the boundary stones of the universal Moral Order laid out in the Ten Commandments, the testimony of the prophets, and the living Word serve the same purpose for God’s creation? Are the markers declaring title for His people? I suppose reasonable people can disagree, but it seems to me that it means just that.

God has created and gifted each of us individually and marked our boundaries. We have value because we are image-bearers, and our receipt of ownership is the Cross and the promised indwelling of the Spirit. Yet, we are still fallen creatures, so God provided markers around every individual’s life that would bring glory to Him if kept.

If that’s true, is the opposite true? Does traveling outside the personal boundary markers mean the reverse in our lives? Are we trespassing on another’s property if we leave our boundary markers? If we move a marker, are we stealing another’s property or from God’s glory? Perhaps we’re simply wandering and lost without the bearings to bring us back to ourselves. Or maybe we decide we don’t like the position of a specific marker in our own life and move it without thought, only to realize too late that it was laid for our protection, not our constraint.

People who work with addictions  and with specific personality issues almost always find their patients are people who have left the markers of their lives, driven by a compulsion that promises relief from pain, or a lostness but takes them even further away from God’s boundary stones for their lives. Social media taunt millions every day to pursue unregulated desires, fed by the lie that true happiness is doing what you want when you want by disregarding or abandoning any pretense of limits.

Perhaps our modern world is no different from past eras. One is reminded that sexual mores in much of the ancient world were often far looser and debauched than even our loose modern standards. And without recourse, extreme violence and suffering were more the rule than the exception. After all, every human who ever has been or will be born comes into the broken world — well, broken.

But in the modern era, we’re at a distinct disadvantage. The transmission of the moral code — the moral reality that we live within — has broken down the further we travel into the digital age. We have moved and removed many of the boundary stones our ancestors laid. The question for us as individuals, as a society, and as a nation is whether we can find our way back to them.