You Don’t Need to Be Tethered

May 1, 2008

By Sylvia Turner

Things have been busy around our house recently. A construction crew of 16 men at work meant we needed to keep our dog Clio hooked up to a chain so he wouldn’t create problems for them.

Early one morning, a couple of our visitors were leaving for the airport. Wayne hooked up Clio to his chain so he wouldn’t be in the way as suitcases were being carried out and they were preparing to leave. After our friends left, we turned to go back in the house and Wayne said, “Look at the dog.” There was Clio, hooked up to the chain ... but the other end of the chain was lying on the ground not attached to anything. He was tethered at one end, but the other end was unattached.

I got to thinking about how something similar often happens to people, particularly in regard to God’s work in our lives. We may have been tethered to a situation or relationship, but through God’s grace we are no longer attached to it. Still, there we sit and live — tethered — when in reality we are free to change, to move, to get on with our lives, to step into a new challenge, a new experience, to do that thing the Lord has been calling us to do.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18,19, NIV).

— Wayne and Sylvia Turner serve as Assemblies of God missionaries in Kinshasa, Congo.