On Memorial Day this year we visited for the 3rd time a house that was for sale. It was a rainy Monday and as we looked around inside and out one more time, it felt like home. One of the highlights was the beautiful trees throughout the property. They accepted our offer and we began the wait and process until closing.
It was during that waiting time that we decided to drive back to the house and look around the yard and the neighborhood a little more closely.
And there it was!
Not one, or even two but 5 ‘No Trespassing’ signs nailed to all the trees separating us from our next door neighbor. They weren’t there when we looked at the house, so why now? We hadn’t even moved in yet, but the communication to ‘stay away’ was posted.
If you know me personally, you know that this really threw me for a loop. I was ready to back out on the house. Here we are all excited about moving into a new home, getting to know our new neighbors, and already the person right next door has clearly said:
‘No Trespassing’!
We did move forward with buying the house and moved in, but everyday as I sat on my back patio, those signs were staring me in the face. Once or twice I would see a lady working in her garden or mowing and I would quickly wave to try and get a response and once she did kind of raise her arm up. So I thought…there’s hope. Maybe the sign wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
Week after week, day after day I would come home to this row of signs:
‘No Trespassing’. July came and went. Then August. One Sunday afternoon mid August I came home from church and made homemade zucchini bread. While I was sitting on the patio drinking coffee waiting on the bread to finish baking I looked over at the signs again and said to myself:
“That’s It!”
“I’m Going In!”
“I’m Gonna Trespass!”
I came in the house and let my husband Dennis know that when that bread came out of the oven, I’m wrapping up a loaf and were we’re gonna meet our neighbors.
We knocked on the door. There was no answer, but we heard what sounded like someone hammering a nail on the back deck. So we walked around back (hoping for the best) and there was the lady working on her deck. She smiled, we handed her the zucchini bread and the conversation began. Come to find out she had put the signs ‘No Trespassing’ up because of some of the workers clearing our property had crossed over into her garden. We handed her the zucchini bread and she walked us to her garden and gave us the three largest zucchini I’ve ever seen.
Lovely lady; wonderful conversation, and a neighbor.
A trespass is an intentional, wrongful entry onto another person's land, without the owner's permission and without a legal privilege to do so.
‘No Trespassing’ Signs are normally placed
to deter someone from coming onto your land and to stop entry. ...
Legal signs are in place for a reason. If you see a Yield sign, ya better Yield. If you don’t Stop at a Stop sign you’ll likely regret it. However, looking at signs from a spiritual perspective can be a whole different journey.
During this ‘Faith Journey’ of moving to Wisconsin it has often been a day by day, week by week, journey in faith and trust.
I’m not proud of my first thoughts about the ‘No Trespassing’ sign. They were pretty childish now that I’ve had a minute to think about it. I wanted to cancel the deal on the house, pack up my bags and move back to Texas. All because of a sign that wasn’t even intended for me; for us.
There are many signs in the Bible, and the people of God needed to discern what they meant. Often they were not ‘spelled out’ clearly and sometimes God’s people had no idea what they meant. They just needed to ‘Trust God’.
God put a rainbow in the sky as a token (a sign) of a covenant between him and all people on the earth. We see this in Genesis chapter 9.
In the book of Exodus we see many signs from God involving Moses and the Israelites. A staff turns into a snake, water is turned to blood, the red sea waters are parted and God appears in a burning bush.
John 20:30-31 sums up the reason for the hundreds of signs and miracles in the Bible:
“Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which aren’t written in this book: But these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through his name.”
We need to be discerning of the signs in our lives. In my case, if I had heeded the ‘No Trespassing’ sign my neighbor posted I would have missed a wonderful opportunity to meet a lovely neighbor. Not only that, every time I sat on my porch with a cup of coffee I would have let thoughts of negativity have havoc in my mind. The potential of letting anger, bitterness and frustration could have been the outcome all because of a sign that wasn’t even intended for me. We’re all guilty of jumping to conclusions about what others may be thinking or their motives, but we need to take these thoughts to Christ. Today Lord Jesus, I choose to put my trust in you and use the wisdom and discernment you give in everything I say, think and do.
Blessings,
Jamie
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