On a mountain road, guardrails aren’t there to ruin the drive. They don’t exist because someone hates freedom. They exist because there are cliffs we can’t see at night, curves that come too fast, and drop-offs that don’t care how confident we feel. A guardrail is love in steel: it limits one kind of movement so we can keep the larger gift—life.

That is the logic of Eden. God placed Adam and Eve in abundance. “You may freely eat” from every tree, and then one boundary: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God did not give a long explanation. God did not sit them down with a full philosophy of evil, desire, and death. God gave a clear command and a consequence: “you shall surely die.” In other words, God wasn’t restricting to be petty. God wasn’t scaring them for sport. God was saving them and shaping them. The boundary was not scarcity. It was training. It taught them: we are not God, and we do not get to define good and evil on our own.

But we still want “why” before we obey. We treat God like a negotiator: “Explain it to our satisfaction, then we’ll comply.” That posture doesn’t work in faith, because faith is trust. It doesn’t work in relationships, because love is commitment before full clarity. It doesn’t work in life, because the cliff is real whether we understand it or not.

We can hear it in everyday moments: “Why should we forgive?” “Why should we tell the truth when it costs us?” “Why should we walk away from temptation when it feels good?” “Why should we give generously when we feel anxious?” If we wait for a complete explanation, we often never move. The serpent’s oldest strategy still works: plant suspicion, make the boundary look like God is withholding, and push us to seize control.

Christ gives us the opposite order: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” Jesus does not say, “If we understand everything, we will abide.” Obedience is not earning love; it is staying inside love. God’s commands are guardrails for closeness.

So we don’t begin with “Why?” We begin with, “Lord, we trust You.” We choose one clear act of obedience—repent, forgive, speak truth, set a boundary, keep our word—and we do it as worship. Understanding often follows faithfulness. When we stay within the guardrails, we find that God’s “no” was always a deeper “yes” to life.