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One of the top 100 Western songs of all time, written by Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher in 1934, and listened to by Yours Truly countless times when mom and dad spun it on the 33 record player with Bing Crosby singing, is “Don’t Fence Me In.” If you know the song, I’m sure that you’re already humming it in your mind. If you don’t know the song, here’s a synopsis: A cowboy wants to go wherever he wants to, literally and figuratively. The refrain of his plea to roam freely is, “Don’t fence me in.”
Fences have two primary roles: one is to keep things in, and the other is to keep things out. And fences are made of all sorts of things, not just the barbed wire that is ubiquitous in the West. Fences are useful and even necessary tools of civilized society. But like any tool, they can be misused and abused. This happens especially with the kinds of fences we erect of the invisible, figurative kind.
Literal fences of the western variety are all about controlling your cows or sheep. But Sunday, we’ll talk about people, including you and me. So, please read Joshua 2:1-15 and Hebrews 11:31 as you prepare to hear this word in our winter series of messages: “Loving Our Neighbors: Where Fences Are No More.”
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