no walls

Walls are different depending on which side you're standing. If you're inside the wall, it provides security and privacy. If you're outside, it excludes you or blocks you. That's why the topic of walls has moved from a point of political difference to a punchline. It kind of points up our varying opinions about people. Are strangers a threat, or are they like us?

It's interesting to me that when God sent the prophet Zechariah a vision of a young man measuring out the new Jerusalem, he included this from Zechariah 2:3-5:

"While the angel who was speaking to me was leaving, another angel came to meet him and said to him: 'Run, tell that young man, "Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it," declares the Lord, "and I will be its glory within."'"

God didn't include a wall in his plans for a holy city. For one thing, I don't think he intended to keep out anyone who came seeking him. Second, if the city needed protection, God himself would be enough. And it seems he planned to have so many people (and animals - do all dogs really go to heaven?) there that a wall would be too confining.

In one way, that seems risky. What about all those people who aren't like me? The ones who don't agree with my Reformed doctrine. The ones who worship differently. The ones who talk weirdly and smell funny and come from strange places. Or the ones who talk just like me and come from down the street and believe exactly what I believe, but I don't really like them anyway. There are going to be a lot of those kind of people there.

On the other hand, there's no chance I'll be kept out of the city. No way someone else is going to decide I don't fit the ambience of this special place for the "Ins"; no way I can be labeled an "Out."

Because in his grace and mercy, out of his love for me, God already chose me. He called me to him, and he paid with his own blood the debt I owed him. God decided before I was born that I am an In. Me and everyone else who will come to the new Jerusalem. 

In the end, I guess, I'm not so much in favor of walls. I like God's inclusiveness; after all, he included me.