But don’t stop! Pursue your enemies, attack them from the rear and don’t let them reach their cities, for the LORD your God has given them into your hand.” – Joshua 10:19

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 14, 2012): Joshua 10

One of the scene’s in the movie “Star Wars” has the heroes of the story gathered together in Hans Solo’s craft - The Millennium Falcon - as they make their escape, attempting to both save the princess and her planet. But as they make the journey, the five escapees on The Falcon run into a scout ship of the Empire. The group cannot make sense of the presence of the scout craft – it was too far away from any base for it to be possible for the small ship to have made it to their current position - but they also knew that they could not allow the scout ship to get back to base, because then the empire would know where it was that they were. So the motley crew of the Falcon decide to pursue and destroy the scout ship as quickly as possible.

Of course, in the movie, the Death Star of the Empire is a lot closer than our heroes would have dreamed. And what was a small problem quickly became a problem that was too big for them to handle. There are several military reasons for not allowing a scouting party or a unit to get back to the main base. So much of war is all about misdirection and not allowing your enemy to know where it is that you are. But there are also psychological benefits. When the enemy sends out it scouts or military units and they disappear, the mind conjures up a lot of different explanations, and none of them are good. Fear is sometimes all that is needed for the battle to be won.

So as the enemy attacks Gibeon, Israel comes in defence of them and the five attacking kings decide to retreat. But retreat would only mean continuing the fight on another day – and possibly against forces that the army of Israel would have trouble handling as other cities in the area decide that banding together is the way to take care of the new threat. It would also mean that Israel would need a continued vigilance around the area of Gibeon at a time when the army would be needed in other areas of the nation. So they needed to pursue them and take care of threat now.

We do not have many military battles that need to be fought in our personal lives. But sometimes the advice to Israel is one that we need to hear. I admit that I am the great procrastinator, preferring to leave the battles I have to fight until a later time. But I recognize the wisdom of pursuing them now, before they become too big for me to handle. If we pursue the threats to us early on, then they never have the chance to get big enough to threaten our lives. And we get to place our focus exactly where  we need it to be.

   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Joshua 11