Foxes and Hedges
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
"Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards
that are in bloom," implores the Lover in the Song of Solomon (2:15). Foxes.
Little foxes. How cute? How destructive if you're actually trying to produce a
harvest. To keep little foxes, deer, and other animals out of our country
gardens and vineyards, we put up chain link fence, maybe with barbed wire
across the top for good measure. The ancients had an effective method:
hedges (Mt 21.33).
All along the country roads one would find protective hedges, carefully
formed from wicked thorn bushes planted close together, their young
branches woven tightly to produce a barrier impenetrable to man and beast.
The idea is used figuratively of God's spiritual protection of Job: "Have you
not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?" (Job
1:10; 3:23).
Pastors must tend and maintain the spiritual hedges around a church, lest they
become broken down "so that all who pass by pick its grapes ... [and] boars
from the forest ravage" (Psalm 80:12-13). We tend the hedges by prayer--
faithful, constant, earnest prayer.
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