THE EDGE OF FOREVER 4 25 11

I SWEAR I COULD SEE FROM HERE TO ETERNITY . . . .

I stood there just looking for a long moment.  I couldn’t believe my eyes . . . .

        Have you ever been to some place that made you feel just plain out of place?  I have. 

Those moments when you feel
out of place . . . might just be from God!

More than once, of course.  But there was this one time, I saw something so big and strange, that "out of place" was all that there was left to feel.  I felt like I was a stranger in a strange land.  And the truth is, I was!

         The occasion was one of a meeting in another town.  I was invited, as a pastor, to serve on a Walk to Emmaus led by church members from northeastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas.  The Walks to Emmaus generally have several preparatory meetings in advance of the “Walk” event itself, and these are usually held on Saturdays.  At the time I lived in Raton, and served a Methodist Church there and in the small town of Des Moines.  If you know anything about northeastern New Mexico you know the distances between towns are far.  If you travel up there you get used to being in your car or truck for long periods of time.  And by 1997 (which is when this happened) I had begun to get used to that. 

The team meeting I was invited to attend was in one of those far flung places – the little village of Amistad.  If you want to find Amistad on the map, you’ll have to look for it hard!  It is a mere speck on the map – barely a town at all.  It’s more just a place where one road that leads to Texas intercepts NM highway 402.  There’s a post office there, a school building (no longer in use), and a little Methodist Church, but not much else.  That church is where our team was supposed to hold our meeting.  I had never been there before, but I had

The Church Building In Amistad . . .
but how to get there?

looked at a New Mexico map, and I knew I had to go through the larger town of Clayton to get there.

       That’s where the trouble began.  I had been to Clayton before, but only the north central part of the town; I mean the main, northwest-to-southeast road (U. S. 64 – 87) as far as the center of town where 64 cuts east to go to Boise City, Oklahoma, and U. S. 87 angles southeast to go to Dalhart, Texas.  But how did one even get to NM 402 and then Amistad, 42 miles later.  Here’s where my maps failed me.  I had no actual map of the town, and the road signs confused me – something which normally never happens.  Just take a look of an actual map of Clayton with the strange positioning of its railroad crossings, and you will see that it can be a hard place to get around if you’re not used to it.

         I followed such signs as I could and used what native horse sense I had (or thought I had!) and found myself on a main road which did indeed lead out of town.  It was called Monroe Street, and it became, as I soon learned, U. S. Highway 56 -- the road to Springer,

New Mexico, some 80 miles later.  But to me on that day, it seemed all wrong.  By the position of the sun I could tell this road ran southwest, which was not the direction of Amistad. The fact that the most recent highway sign I had seen called this U. S. Highway 56, didn’t help matters either. 

I followed it to the edge of town, where the mile indicator to Springer stood; then I kept on

U. S. 56 led off into a great distance . . . .

until I had passed the last motel on the left side of the road.  That’s where it hit me:  U. S. 56 at that point makes this great big plunge downward into a sort of wide, valley filled with low, rolling hills.  The town of Clayton sits on the edge of a plateau, so you can see literally for miles from that particular point.  I knew this was not the way to Amistad, and I also knew I was lost.  That was enough all by itself. 

         But something else happened within me just then.  I pulled over to the side of the road, and got out, in order to study my map again.  The view straight ahead was lovely but also scary:  all of this huge expanse that the highway was dropping down into, with no houses or signs of civilization in view.  There were mountains off in the distance:  the Sierra Grande volcanic peaks and the Sangre de Christo's beyond that, and not yet in sight.  The air was clear and cold for miles, except for a cloud or two.  An early spring breeze, with the promise of more snow, was in the air.  It was the biggest, grandest view I had seen in years.  And it was overwhelming.

         I felt just then as if I was standing on the edge of a high cliff with no one daring me to
jump.  I knew it was way too dangerous.  Or maybe like a man who barely knew how to swim; but then some giant hand had plucked that man up from dry land and just tossed him into the middle of a wild, churning ocean.  That’s how overwhelming this expansive view was in those moments.  It was awe-inspiring and a little bit fearful.  I had this sudden impression

Can't open that door?  Can't go through it?
God is telling you no!

that wherever I was just then I didn’t belong there.  This was not my true and proper world.  I was at the edge of a doorway or gateway, but I was not supposed to go through that door.  I could see that whole new world, but the door was barred from my entering it.  I heard in that moment as clearly as if the words had been spoken out loud, “don’t go any further.  You don’t belong here.  This is not for you.”

         Now you probably know I found out where I was soon enough.  GPS systems had not been made generally available or affordable by that time, so I turned the car around, drove back to the motel I had so recently passed.   There on the west side of Clayton, I asked the desk clerk for directions, and within an hour got to my meeting in Amistad on time.  But I have thought about that experience since then.  But my mind was not entirely on that meeting. 

    Of course, I have seen vast distances from high points like this before.  There is a view like this just east of Clayton where you drop down precipitously on U. S. 64 to go to the Oklahoma border and Boise, ––Oklahoma.  There’s another view like this just west of the town of Capulin, west of Clayton on that same highway.  And growing up I remember driving westward over the edge of the great Crockett Plateau, as I drove home to Ft. Stockton on U. S. Highway 190.  That drop is even more precipitous and to a much lower elevation.  All of these were great views of wide, distant expanses of beautiful country.  But none of them came close to giving me the experience of coming to a border beyond which I could not go.

That view off the Crocket Plateau
was something else!

        Today I believe this experience was a message from God to me personally.  He was letting me know of my very real limitations in this life.  But perhaps that was a message from God for all of us as well.  Maybe for all of our lives he is He is telling us there are places we cannot go; places that are not yet ready for us, or that we are ready for.  Mind you, there is nothing wrong with those places in and of themselves.  But they are simply off limits to you.  That would be sort of like what the apostle Paul ran into when he was trying to go into different parts of Western Asia Minor:

 6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.
7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas.
9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Paul saw the vision of a Macedonian Man
who said, "Come over here
and help us!"

God was closing some doors to the Apostle Paul to get him to the place where God could finally open the right door.  Maybe if the Father of Jesus Christ is closing a door for you, He is also opening up another one.  He is sending His Holy Spirit to stop or start you, or sending you a vision which clearly points out His new direction.  This, of course, is all so that you can live for Him, honor Him, and do His work in the world.
Sometimes those good-looking wide-open spaces are just intended by God to be gazed at from a distance; but not to be explored.  Not by you.  Or maybe not now.  Not when Jesus, the Son of God who loves you, has a different direction for you.

LBC