The Vanishing Edge

Every Monday we’ll post something about maintaining your sexual integrity. Hope it helps.

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The Vanishing Edge

We were out to dinner with a couple this weekend and, as often happens, the husbands paired off while the wives engaged in their own conversation. My friend and I started commiserating and complaining about the usual – not enough time, too little energy, too much uncertainty. It felt good to vent and be vented to, but one point he brought up especially resonated with me. “We need margins”, he noted, “and when we’ve got too much unscheduled time, we can actually wind up getting less done.”

It got me thinking about my own need for clarity. Being in business for myself like millions of others, I have to set my own hours, and if I don’t generate boundaries for the day via a schedule, a list of priorities, and some sense of order, it’s amazing how little gets done when so much time is available. A large part of my job description is to create markers, goal points, and routine, and lately, I’ve been falling down pretty badly on all three. In my defense, I plead a truckload of unexpected professional and family needs that have come a’ tumbling down these past weeks. In rebuttal, I know darned well that’s no excuse and it certainly doesn’t make me unique. Too much to do plus too little time is a common malady women and men everywhere are dealing with, and it’s one I haven’t faced well. So it’s no wonder I feel unusually stressed and confused. It’s not the long hours that get me down. It’s the undefined, unstructured ones.

God loves order; loathes confusion. (I Corinthians 14:33) The first creative act we see Him performing in scripture is creation, and the next is a corrective one in which He speaks order to a cosmos that had become “without form and void.” (Genesis 1:1-3) Thus the edge was created: Light and Dark, Land and Water; Animals and Human; Male and Female. Tremendous liberty was given our first parents, certainly, in naming the animals, keeping the land as they chose, and eating (almost) whatever they wanted. But it was liberty within defined parameters, the only real liberty I know of.

No wonder He wants me expressing myself within defined parameters today. If I misuse any of what He’s given me, my sexuality included, I create confusion. To lust is to covet someone I cannot bond with; to masturbate is to expend life giving energy on nothingness; to fornicate or commit adultery is to forge bonds that cannot, under such terms, be adhered to; to view porn is to mock genuine engagement. When the edges get crossed or moved, the logical outcome is wasted time and confusion.

Some would call this sort of thinking legalism, but I sure don’t. Legalism happens when I think God is impressed, or I am justified, by my performance. Liberty happens when I recognize God given edges while celebrating God given options. And with that liberty available, I start the day praying for order in my life, order that extends to my thoughts and passions as well as my actions.

There’s already enough confusion in the world, thank you. God grant that you and I be sources of clarity today, a clarity expressed in our speech, and evidences in our lives.

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