The talk about a possible new Cold War brought to mind a story I read recently.

A study has shown that the descendants of the red deer, which lived close to a stretch of the “Iron Curtain” electric fence that separated the former Czechoslovakia from West Germany, continue to avoid crossing the old frontier. It’s like an instilled inherited trait. Even though they have the freedom to do so now, they don’t branch out into new territory.

The deer follow the same route. Even after 25 years they choose instinctively to tread the familiar paths.

We can be like those deer: locked in by habits learned from others, or by new habits of our own – despite the fact that we don’t need to be!

The Bible discusses this idea. It says that once we behaved as if there was a wall between us and God, but Jesus destroyed that barrier. It says he broke down the middle wall of partition, meaning that access to God is now available to everyone at all times. We’re free to come to God because he has come to us.

Yet what happens is that we behave as if the wall is still there, as if we are still confined by its limitations. Like the Czech deer, we keep moving along the same old tracks.

Let’s break out.

Cross the divide.

Go to God.

Used with permission from james.henderson@gracecom.org.uk

Image © Copyright Walter Baxter