This morning I read one of those minor Bible stories that has always grabbed my imagination, in Numbers 13: “1The Lord said to Moses, 2 ‘Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites . . . .’ 21 So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath . . . . 25 At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.”
This strikes me as a grand quest, the Israelite version of the Lewis and Clark expedition, or Daniel Boone in the Cumberland. It doesn’t take much imagination to see Joshua, Caleb and the group of 12 as much the same as the Fellowship of the Ring. They saw wonders, they encountered different tribes, they came to mighty cities and quaint villages, and they brought back the biggest bunch of grapes anyone had ever seen as proof the land was fertile.
So it’s disappointing to read the results, at the end of the chapter. Although the land is beautiful and fruitful as promised, the group reports it would be too dangerous to go. The people there are big and tough, and numerous. Only Caleb and Joshua speak up in faith.
That strikes me as a lot like life. In among the beauty, in those places where God sends me, there are always monsters, those reasons not to go. Often those monsters loom so large they dominate my thinking, and I don’t even look at the bunch of grapes so big that it drags on the ground. There are great blessings where God sends, and provision for the hard things too.
If things were certain, and always good, they wouldn’t require faith. If I only follow when God wants easy things, do I really have faith?
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