Today's reading from the Chronological OT/NT Reading Plan is Joshua 1-3, Luke 9:1-17
Good morning folks! I pray your heart is filled with spring and sunshine even if outside your windows isn't.
I am super stoked about today's readings.
First we've got the beginning of Joshua. I'm sure Joshua has been in an active leadership role here for quite some time, but now he's solo. Moses has died and he has the awesome responsibility of leading the people (finally) into the promised land. Now it's not just a nice little walk in the park, he's gotta cross the Jordan river and take out all the people of the land. Not an easy task to begin with. But he knows that the Lord is with him. And in fact the Lord tells him that he has given him this task so that the people will know the Lord is with him just as he was with Moses. Interesting, isn't it? Sometimes the Lord gives us seemingly insurmountable tasks so that His glory and power can be seen. (This ties in so well with our NT passage. But we'll get to that later.)
I tried to get an idea of how wide and deep the Jordan river is or was and couldn't get a real clear picture, but what I did gather was that it is a big river. We do know from our reading that this impressive river was even bigger still at this point in time, for it overflows it's banks during harvest. This was quite a body of water. I'm sure many of the people were remembering the stories their parents and grandparents had told them about the crossing of the red sea and I'm sure Joshua remembered it as well. I don't think it's any coincidence that this is the touchstone for Joshua's leadership.
This also becomes a touchstone for the people as well. Most of the people had been wandering around with their parents for a while and hadn't seen the wonders of the plagues of Egypt or even the crossing of the Red Sea. All they had were stories. And they were about to go up against many strong and powerful people. They needed a memory, fresh, new and strong in their brains when going into battle. They needed to know that God was in control of all things.
It's interesting that the water did not part until the priests showed faith and actually touched the water. It did not happen one millisecond before. I know God was able to open up those waters before hand, but often we have to show our faith and step forth and then He does His stuff. I just thought that was neat.
Then in Luke, we have a very famous passage of scripture. It certainly stands out in the disciples memory, for we have an account of it in all four gospels. And for good reason. The one big thing (hah hah) that stands out to me is that Jesus knew what he was going to do to feed the people, but he challenged his disciples first. He deliberately tested them. You see testing changes us. It's not so that God can see how well we are doing, He already knows that. It's so that we can see the power of God in our lives. So we can see just what we are made of and what God is making us into. Testing is for us. If we were never tested we would never know what the Lord is capable of doing through us. It's a good thing. Doesn't feel good, but it produces goodness and strength within us so that we can be used further.
May we all see the testing as blessings.
Tomorrow's passage: Joshua 4-6, Luke 9:18-36
4 comments:
Ooooh, I like your thoughts on testing. Never thought about it from that perspective before! I'm going to be thinking on this for awhile - thanks!!
Great post, Kathryn. "...often we have to show our faith and step forth and then He does His stuff." Definitely true, and we see it again and again throughout the Bible. I like what you said about testing, too. It made me think of Romans 5:3-4: "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation."
You're so right, testing is for our benefit, not God's. And yet, we so do not want it, especially at the time!
I love God's pep talk to Joshua. He had some HUGE shoes to fill after Moses died and I'm sure he needed the encouragement.
Great post. One of my favourite verses is Joshua 1:9 and I did a music video last year with my Grade 1 class using a song with the words of that verse and it was cool for it to jump out at me from today's readings and give it more context than I had thought of before.
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