When we lived in Virginia Beach, we never let Shadow out the front door. The danger was too great. Dogs, cat-hating neighbors, speeding cars…too many deadly terrors awaited a timid little cat. Instead, we let her out on our second-story balcony. She could sniff the air and stalk bugs without fear.
Even in the safety of the railed balcony, however, a loud or unrecognized sound sent her bolting indoors.
When we moved to a farm in Oregon, we expanded Shadow’s horizons. During warm spring days we let—okay, shoved—her out the door and into the yard. No dangers lurked there in daylight. She encountered few cars, a playful dog, many friendly cats and no neighbors. Our feline owner was free to delight in new scents and textures, to scamper after butterflies and meander through a jungle of tomato plants. We trusted her natural timidity to keep her close so we could retrieve her when darkness ushered in the dangers of night.
Boy, were we right. Well, partly.
In Shadow’s mind, the green expanse of yard offered too little cover. Lilac bushes presented opportunities to be ambushed, not welcome shade. Bugs were monsters and other animals were, of course, anathema.
Our timid Shadow abandoned the bright environs of the yard for what were, to her, safer climes. Every night we had to seek her out in the machine shop, in the woodshed, in a pile of abandoned telephone poles or rusted metal, in whatever dark hole she had chosen as her refuge.
Then she discovered the roof.
It was easy to access the roof. Well, easy for a cat. A clamber up the old apricot tree, a leap to the dormer, and she was there. The yard with all its imagined dangers lay far below her. Shadow’s world became an expanse of gray shingles under an open sky. She had no access to food and no water. She found too little shade when it was sunny and too little shelter when it stormed. She was hot, thirsty, hungry, lonely…and safe. There she stayed until we pulled out a ladder or removed a screen to come for her.
Come for her we did, always. Every nice day, we popped her out the door again, hoping she would learn to trust our knowledge, to trust us. Every night we had to seek her out in her high places.
I have had times in my life—more than I’m happy to recall—when I’ve shown similar behavior. I’ve staked out my patch of roof and stayed there despite God’s calls to come down and experience something better. This is not unique to me. It’s so common that we’ve developed a cliché for it: “stuck in a rut.” Rut or roof, it’s much the same. We are lonely, thirsty, hungry and battered by the elements but we are…safe.
At least, we think we are.
God, though, calls us to something higher. (Forgive the pun; it was unintended!) Perhaps I should say, God calls us to something vaster. He opens the door into a green expanse and urges us to step through.
“Don’t worry,” He says. “I’ve checked it out. There’s nothing out there you can’t handle.”
Time after time, we pull back or retreat to our rooftops. We dig in our heels and wail about the unfairness of our dreary lives. All the while, we miss the sunny stretch of greater faith, wider love and deeper relationship that goes along with taking that step.
Sticking to the rooftops isn’t a 21st century phenomenon. The history of Israel in the Old Testament is full of places where the Israelites turned from God and went to high places…literally. High places, the tops of hills and mountains, were where other nations built altars to pagan gods. Israel inevitably, time after time, picked up the high places and the pagan worship that went with them.
“In every town in Judah he built high places to burn sacrifices to other gods and provoked the LORD, the God of his fathers, to anger” (2 Chronicles 28:25 NIV).
“They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols” (Psalm 78:58 NIV).
Yes, as with any kind of faithlessness, Israel’s abandonment aroused God’s anger. And he expressed it through prophets like Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea.
“The high places of wickedness will be destroyed— it is the sin of Israel. Thorns and thistles will grow up and cover their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’” (Hosea 10:8 NIV)
Our high places, unlike Shadow’s and the Israelites, aren’t often literal. They express the same thing, though. They all express a deep and abiding lack of faith. The Israelites didn’t think their God was enough, so they added a few more gods…or abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob altogether. Shadow doesn’t trust my word that the yard is safe, so she looks for higher ground. We don’t have faith that God will guide and protect us wherever He leads us, so we dig in our heels. Remember what God says when He opens that door?
“Don’t worry. I’ve checked it out. There’s nothing out there you can’t handle.”
Or, similar to what Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Cor. 10:13 NIV).
Whether we endure trials or break new ground in faith, God calls us to step out in trust. We all too often say. “No thanks, God. Have you seen the size of the dogs in this neighborhood? I’ll stay where I am.”
But God doesn’t call us to stay put. He never has. The New Testament is short on graphic threats toward high places, but the God of Israel still calls us to faith. He calls us to Him. He calls us to run faster, dig deeper, trust more. One of the places the Bible expresses this most eloquently is in Hebrews 11, the “faith” chapter.
“And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. …. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” (Heb. 11:32-34; 12:1)
A rooftop can't hold a racetrack. God wants us race toward Him; He wants us to come down from our spiritual rooftops. He wants us to come down so He can lead us up in His own time. Yes, he wants to lead us up, but to the mountaintops, not the rooftops. First, though, we need to climb back down the apricot tree. We need to step into the yard.
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