Allotment | Wayfarer

“The Lord said to Moses,“Command the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that will be allotted to you as an inheritance is to have these boundaries…”
Numbers 34:1-2 (NIV)

For a brief period season in my college years I worked as an abstractor. An abstract is a legal record of the history of a plot of land. For most people it’s a whole lot of indecipherable legalese, but it’s a necessary part of lawfully setting and keeping boundaries. And, in some cases when you learn to read through the legalese you can learn all sorts of interesting tidbits about the history of a property, the people who owned it, what was built on it, how it may have been contested, and how it changed hands through the generations.

As we get near the end of this chapter-a-day trek through the book of Numbers we run into some classically boring chapters. Today’s chapter is one of those. Moses and the Hebrew tribes are making preparations to enter the Promised Land, and God through Moses lays out instructions for the boundaries and how to allot land to the tribes and their families. In essence, God is being an ancient abstractor. The process isn’t willy-nilly. It’s not a situation in which the most powerful get whatever they can take and maintain. The process is orderly and structured so as to create equitable allotments and boundaries in which every family and every tribe can find protection, build fruitful lives, and flourish.

As I meditated on this in the quiet this morning, I was reminded of a season of my own life journey in which everything fell apart. When you go through a divorce life can seem like boundaries are erased. Everything moves and shifts, what was once established is now contested and negotiated. All parties in the family both nuclear and extended get pulled into the ripple effects of the boundary lines of family and life shifting. It is not a pleasant experience even when it is a relatively mutual parting of ways.

In the wake of this season, I had a prophetic friend who had received a word for me from the Holy Spirit. It’s written down. I still have it:

“I saw like in Ireland they have those, those stones where they mark “this is the edge of my property.” I saw that those stones had been burned, that they’d been turned down, they’d been removed in your life. And the Father said, “This is the season. I’m going to restore all the boundaries, all the things that I’ve designed for you to walk in.”

Boundary stones and abstracts are good things. Having them means you have a plot on which to live, flourish, and be protected in a place you call home. Christian commentators through the ages have noted that while the Hebrews were given physical boundaries and allotted physical land in Numbers this was just a metaphorical foreshadowing of the spiritual Promised Land, allotment, and inheritance that Jesus would provide to every believer.

After all, Jesus told us that our hearts were soil and on that soil things grow and are built. Jesus cautioned us to grow good fruit and to be careful how and what we build on that soil in our hearts. Jesus’ teaching provides boundaries intended for my safety, my security, for growing good things, storing eternal treasures, and building those things that will equally last for eternity.

Looking back, I can testify that my prophetic friend channeled a good Word from God’s Spirit. The boundary stones were re-established and restored. Within those boundary stones God has blessed me and I have flourished in ways that I once thought were simply not possible.

I hear the Psalmists words echo in my heart this morning:

“Your boundary lines mark out pleasant places for me. Indeed, my inheritance is something beautiful.”
Psalm 16:6 (GW)