Line upon Line

Once upon a time, there was a good man (spoiler alert: that’s me). He moved his family to Utah and bought a nice, brand-new house. The neighborhood was attractive, the view was awe-inspiring, and the house was perfect. The man wanted a fence, as all his neighbors had, to hold in his children, to hold out neighborhood animals, and in time, to hold in his own animal.

Since the house was perfect, he wanted the fence to be perfect. He consulted with a man of great wisdom on ‘doing it yourself’ (his father-in-law) and learned the principles of proper fence-building. The horizontal 2x4s were to be eight feet long and cut to precision to be able to attach each end to the fence posts set exactly seven and a half feet apart.  The 2x4s were to be attached, one on the top, one in the middle, and one at the bottom. Each fence post was to be set in a hole exactly two feet deep so that it would rise six feet above the ground.  It was to be surrounded with carefully mixed concrete.

The man did as he was taught and began building the 400-foot-long fence with artistic precision on the east side of his yard. Every board was selected with care, set with a level, and as he was instructed, double-nailed for longevity. ‘This would take two weekends to finish the fence, he thought, ‘Not one as I had originally planned.’  However, he did not doubt the effort required because he knew it was worth it.

Many weekends … and weeknights … and week-mornings … and trips to the hardware store later, the man was still working. In fact, more than a month had gone by, and he was still hammering. He pressed on, following every principle he had been given by the wise old man, and would not allow himself to stop.

He had begun working in the weekday evenings after dinner. Though he felt exhausted from his day job, he was able to dig, to measure, to cut and to hammer one or two hours each night, adding another section each time. Despite his weariness, he would not give up. He was committed to finishing the ever-growing, perfect fence following all the guidance the wise old man had given him. Section by section, the fence went up, looking like a line of soldiers at attention – flawlessly straight and rigid as stone.

One evening, as the sun was setting, the man went out to begin his work, hanging a light from the last section he had completed. He pushed in his shovel and not six inches into the ground, the man hit a rock. This was not unusual, as with many post holes he had needed to dig out rocks of various sizes. However, this night, the man had found a very, very big rock. He dug to the sides, wider and wider, never finding an edge. The man became increasingly troubled as he considered the rock would be too large to remove. At this very moment, the future of the man and his fence were held in the balance. To this point, had been valiant, serving the standards he had committed himself to.  However, to move the rock, which would weigh hundreds of pounds, would require others, perhaps an entire Saturday, and a trailer to be rented and a fee paid to put it wherever very large rocks were put.

At this moment, the man considered that perhaps he was too obsessive about his standards.  With that momentary relaxation of his commitment, an idea flashed into his mind. He looked at the last post – it seemed firm, as all the others were. He walked ahead and dug the next post hole. The shovel easily took out the dirt to the two-foot mark. ‘If the last post is firm,’ thought the man, ‘and the next post he would put in this hole was firm, perhaps I can just shortcut on the middle post. Though I can only set it six inches into the soil, I will compensate by putting in lots of cement around the edges. This post will be held up by the posts to either side of it. It may wiggle a little, but these firm posts will keep it in place.’  Though he could not, or maybe would not see it, this decision would lead to destruction.

The man proceeded with his plan, so involved he did not consider the wisdom of what he was doing.  He cut the post one and a half feet shorter and rested it upon the great and horrible rock. He poured concrete out to the sides until he had a concrete disk, like a pancake that was three feet across. He finished the first section attaching the post of little depth to the one before it, and then completed the next section from the compromised post to the next one, firmly anchored into the ground.

Though the man knew what was beneath the ground, the post having little anchor to the concrete, on the surface it looked perfect. He pushed the completed sections and though they moved ever so slightly, unlike the rigid sections he had built over the last few months, he felt justified in his action.  It looked perfect.  Perfect double-nailed fence slats aligned at perfect right angles to perfectly straight cross boards, each of which was attached perfectly to a fence post that though it was not perfect, he had buried its problems out of sight, giving the appearance of perfection.

Two nights and two sections later, a tempter came to the man in the form of a neighbor offering to help. ‘Why’ he asked, ‘are you using two nails on every board?  This is a fence, not a house. I just used one nail on each part of each board of mine, and it is holding up fine.’  The man looked across the street at the neighbor’s fence. Indeed, he was right. It appeared to be holding up just fine. Had the man used even 1% of the brain the good Lord gave him, he would have realized that it was no feat for a fence to stand for the three weeks it had been finished. However, once he compromised and felt no apparent consequences, he became open to doing so again.  He began nailing each slat to the cross bars with one nail rather than two, and the cross bars to the post with one nail instead of two.

The evenings passed, and when the man was almost finished, he encountered another trial in his fence building.  Again, he struck a rock. This one was also large but positioned in such a way that the man could make a slight adjustment in his plan and avoid moving the rock.  ‘Perhaps,’ he mused, ‘I have been too stringent in my seven and a half feet distance between posts. I will simply put this post about 7.25 feet from the last one and cut off the extra length of the horizontal boards.’  The man did so and finished that section. When the man looked, he was troubled that this section did not look like all the others, being able to see it was slightly shorter. However, he justified his decision by remembering the great rock and the impossibility of moving it.

The next night, as the man prepared to build the next section, he encountered yet another trial, begat of the one before it. He had forgotten that he had already dug the remaining post holes for the rest of the fence. This meant that the next post would be almost eight feet from the previous one he had adjusted. Since the horizontal boards were only eight feet long, there would be almost no overlap so that the horizontal board could be nailed to the post. However, putting the post closer would mean re-digging all the remaining holes 6 inches to the side. For one, this would be a great amount of work, and the fence was finally coming to its finish. For two, it would mean enormous holes and much more concrete. The man had just enough bags already in his garage and did not want to go buy more. Therefore, he decided, he would simply use the small, half-inch overlap and drive nails in on an angle to hold the boards up. Surely this would be good enough. He had learned in the past week that the commandments of fence building he had learned were far too strict and while they sounded sensible when taught, in the reality of his backyard, he needed to adapt them and compromise.  The wise old man who taught him did not seem to understand the challenges in his yard.  ‘After all,’ he reasoned.  The wise old man lived in an area where the ground was all soil without rocks. The wise old man did not understand this man’s plight.  Those rules would not work in the imperfections of the real world.

The man hammered his nails in on an angle, positioning them carefully so his shortcut would not be visible to anyone, putting more emphasis on appearance than on building a proper fence.  In just a few days, the fence was finished – two and one-half months after it had been started.  It was indeed beautiful, and the man doubted anyone would see the difference in length in the two sections.  After all, it was so slight.  And, he knew nobody could see to the underground of the too-short post, now abutted with beautiful new sod.

The years passed. The man added two children to the two he had when the fence was built. The fence kept them in, as planned. The neighbors moved in and out, bringing with them dogs of every kind, who were, as planned, kept out. (The neighbor who was a bad influence moved away to tempt another person in another land). And the man even got his own dog. The dog lived happily in the large backyard of the man, contained by the 400-foot fence.

During those years, the wind would occasionally blow with great force, sometimes even breaking tree branches. The man surveyed his fence. He was proud that most of it never budged in these storms, though the fence of the neighbors frequently blew down. (The tempter’s one fence blew down early on, which should have been an indication to the man of what was coming for him – but the man was not that insightful). However, as the man surveyed the one section where he had taken shortcuts, he saw the fence sway at the point where the post only went down six inches. He worried for a while, planning in time to address the problem, removing the rock and re-digging the post into the ground. Before he did, however, many windstorms came. Despite the great swaying of the fence, it did not fall.

Perhaps, thought the man, this is a good design after all. Perhaps giving a little on the standards has allowed it to move with the wind, making it less likely to blow down and adapting to the challenges of the storms in the place in which he lived.  He ignored the possible lesson he might have learned from the rest of the fence that never moved an inch in the wind, still as strong as they were when built many years before. He reconciled to himself that all would be well and dropped thoughts of fixing the fence.

More years and more storms passed. The fence swayed more but never fell. Nobody noticed, and the man never shared the weakness he had allowed into the fence.  ‘It is still standing,’ he consoled himself. ‘It won’t make any difference.’

Then, one night, a great storm came, stronger than any the man remembered. Winds beyond all records blew, tearing down trees and power poles and ripping roof shingles off homes on the street. The fence swayed wildly at the six-inch-deep post. The man and his son who had been five at the time of the great fence construction and was now 17, went out at midnight, propping the fence with boards to keep it from swaying. There was a darkness in the wind, more than that which came from the moonless night. The wind felt foreboding in a way that left the man chilled. As he surveyed his fence, he noticed that while the six-inch-deep post did not fall, something new was happening. As the fence swayed at its weak point, it loosened the post that had been set firmly next to it. That post, despite its firm setting, had not been strong enough to hold itself up along with the compromised one.

This post now swayed back and forth and the combined swaying of the two posts was too much for the next properly placed post, and it too started to sway. The horizontal board that only had the half-inch overlap had come off at the top, letting the whole next section pivot back and forth on its own, fully separated from the posts that were supposed to support it. On this section and all those after it, there was only one nail in each board holding it to the horizontal boards instead of two. The nails now not only did not secure the fence but acted as hinges, promoting the movement of the fence left and right. The man watched everything happening and felt sad. This night, at midnight, as the wind howled about him, he saw his work start to destroy itself, one shortcut compounding upon the next. There was nothing he could do. In this time of great reckoning, he could only watch as he knew what would happen.

His son anxiously kept propping the fence, calling to his father to help him finish. ‘No’ the man said sorrowfully to his son. ‘It is no use tonight. The future of this fence was cast long ago.’  He called his son into the house, urging him to forget their fence. As the man went to bed, he tried to fall asleep quickly, hoping not to hear the inevitable sound of the fence coming down.

The next day dawned beautiful and clear. The man looked out his bedroom window with trepidation. With mild surprise, he saw that it was standing. The props his son had placed had, in fact, held it up. He looked out the front window and saw his neighbors – fences were down, tree limbs scattered, and roofs damaged. While the man realized that he had, in fact, fared pretty well compared to the neighbors, there was no joy in that knowledge.  He was sad in his heart. He knew what lay beneath the dirt of the compromised post. He knew every board where there was one nail instead of two. He knew about the half-inch overlap. He knew it was only a matter of time.

A few nights later, there was a mild wind, almost calming in its steady but light force. In the night, the man heard cracks, and he knew what had happened. He closed his eyes tightly, trying unsuccessfully to shut out the painful regret of the evening many years ago in which he violated the rules the wise old man had given him. In the morning, he looked, knowing what he would see. A wind that scarcely took any leaves off the trees, one that would not move a splinter of a healthy fence, had been too much for the fence that was worn and beaten by its shortcomings.

Section after section had fallen, each one pulling otherwise strong sections with it. Then, to compound his sorrow, a great snow came the next day, heaping many inches upon the fence which lay prostrate upon the ground. Without warming, one winter storm came after another, heaping more and more snow on top of the fallen fence. All winter, the fence lay down, allowing the man’s dog out, the neighbors’ dogs in, and providing no protection for his young children still left at home, and the snow and cold preventing the man from dealing with it.

The man did not like looking at it that winter. It reminded him of all that he had done wrong. Every time he saw it, he thought of those nights thirteen years before he had taken shortcuts, he had lowered his standards to ‘good enough’ and given less than his best when it was ‘too hard.’  He forgave his tempting neighbor who had been influenced by incorrect principles, leading him to give bad advice.  The man knew that no one had forced him to put in only one nail.

Finally, one spring day after the last remnants of snow had melted, the man decided it was time to repair his fence and make it right. He purchased strong fence posts. He purchased good quality cement. Then, for two Saturdays, he labored by the sweat of his brow as he dug out the foundations of the old posts, carrying the forty-pound chunks of concrete that had not been enough to anchor the fence posts against the weaknesses of those next to them. He set the new posts, replacing the ones that had once been healthy, measuring with precision. He mixed and mixed the concrete, carefully setting it in the holes. He put up the old sections, removing the bad boards and replacing them with new ones. He put second nails in all the pieces, securing them as firmly as they should have been in the first place.

‘Interesting,’ he thought, ‘that many of these old boards will still be effective if they just have that second nail. Alas, some of them broke in the storms and were of no further use. But several are left that if improved with the second nails, will be as good as new boards.’  As he neared finishing, he surveyed his work. This fence was strong. There were no hidden weaknesses beneath the ground. It would stand as long as necessary. This is as it should have been from the beginning, but at least was this way now.

Yet, there was one more step. The old six-inch-deep post still needed to be removed and replaced. ‘This was the one,’ he thought, ‘that had corrupted all the others. He knew that the rock of great proportions was still there.  For a moment, he wondered if, given that he had replaced all the other fence parts properly and would attach the final two sections to this post properly, perhaps he should still only place the post six inches down. Then, a memory of similar words came to him of a night 13 years before. No, the man thought. Not this time. He got his wallet, and drove to the hardware store, buying two more bags of concrete and one more post – and a large sledgehammer and a wedge to turn the very, very large rock into many small rocks.

Early one Saturday morning, he went to his yard to begin what he believed would be an all-day job fracturing the large rock. He committed to himself, that no matter how long it took, he would not stop until he had cleared a space for a proper posthole. With all his energy, he took his first swing at the rock with the sledgehammer. To his immediate surprise, he saw the rock splinter into pieces. The large rock that was only six inches below the surface was only a few inches thick. In a matter of minutes, he had removed enough pieces so that he could dig his post two feet deep.

By that evening he sat upon his deck and surveyed the final post that was standing erect in the concrete. He laughed at himself that, had he not given up so many years before, it would not have been as hard as he had imagined to overcome the challenge of removing the rock. And, it struck him that none of the other challenges he faced would have existed if had not made his first bad decision.   Had he only not compromised and remained committed to the standards that the wise old man had given him, all would have been well.

For many more years, through changing seasons, new neighbors and growing children that became adults, the fence stood, strong and resolute – every last section of it.

We are all building fences. As we build, we learn there is no true shortcut, no way to compensate for sin with an overabundance of goodness. When the inevitable winds we face blow across our fence, the weaknesses we have allowed to exist will come to the surface. It may happen in a time of great affliction, or at a time in which there is little to disturb our fence, but at a point in which the sin has finished sapping the strength from us. Whenever it happens, it will come. We need to build our fences according to the rules we have been given, and where we have compromised, we need to reset those posts, to fix the shortcomings we know we have but that are hidden. We need to set the extra nails for firmness and protection, though it may seem unnecessary at the time.

Despite those around us who encourage us that it is ‘good enough,’ or too hard, or that the yard in which we build our fence will not permit us to follow the rules, we need to do what we know to be right. In the end, the Lord will allow the winds to blow against us to help those shortcomings come out because he loves us. We cannot attain his presence with those problems within. He wants us with him. We need to build our fence, but He will help us, every step of the way.  And when it breaks, due to mistakes we have made or from conditions we cannot control, he will guide us how to repair it, teaching us along the way, so that our fence will stand forever.