Today’s
Scripture Reading (December 28, 2018): Joshua 1
Albert
Camus in “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays writes that “there is scarcely
any passion without struggle.” But struggle often takes a toll on us. There is
a price to be paid for our fights, even if the fight is good and the war is won. The reality is that when we emerge from
a time of struggle, we are seldom ready to go back into the fight, at least not
right away. We need a time of rest.
Consider
the life of Moses. We can roughly divide the life of Moses into three sections.
The first section was Moses’s life in the palace in Egypt. For the most part,
this section of Moses life was dominated
by privilege. Here he did not live as a slave
but as a Prince. He was not forced to work making bricks for the building
projects of the Pharaoh. Instead, he was well-educated and lived in the comfort
of the palace. But at the end of this section of his life, there was a
struggle. He began to pick up the fight of his people. He didn’t do it in the most productive way, but he did become
active in the struggle, and as a result,
lost the comfort that had dominated his life.
The
second section of the life of Moses was spent
in the wilderness. This section was dominated by Moses the family-man. He got married
and had children, he took care of the sheep and led a life that was far
different from his life of luxury in the palace. There was a struggle to living, there always is, but it was
different than what he had experienced back in Egypt.
Then,
as the third section of Moses’s life began, God invites him back into the
struggle in Egypt. At first, Moses is not interested. He had tried when he was
a Prince; there was no way that the
Shepherd he had become was going to be more successful than the Prince had been.
He had been in the struggle, and he did
not want to go back. But, eventually, Moses says yes to God and goes back into
the struggle. And in the struggle, Moses once more discovers his passion.
Personally,
on some levels, I struggle with the reign
of Joshua. While Moses prepared Israel for the day when he would no longer lead
the nation, Joshua did not seem to have the passion to do the same. It is not that he was without passion. If we divide
his life into three sections, during the first section of his life, we see him active in the struggle to stay alive
as a slave in Egypt. During the Exodus, his involvement in the struggle to form
a nation and the passion that resulted placed him in a position of leadership,
eventually becoming Moses’s most trusted confident, and the one to whom Moses
would pour himself into as Joshua developed as a leader.
But
then, something changed. Joshua seems to lose the passion. He does not develop
a leader to follow him. He does not seem to have the passion needed to take the
Promised Land. And maybe the secret is found right here at the beginning of his
story as leader over Israel. While the promise that God will be with us and
will never leave us is important, it can sometimes, if we let it, remove us
from the struggle. Joshua had struggled, and now he decided to do the minimum
necessary. He seemed to feel that he needed a time of rest. He would take the
minimum land needed and take the easiest route possible toward settling his
people into Canaan. Joshua left the struggle, and
at the same time, he seemed to lose the
passion.
God
still promises to be with us, but that should encourage us to attempt the
impossible. It is always tempting to want God to give us the easy path, but the
reality is that the easy path, the path without a struggle, is also one devoid of passion, and it is passion that makes life worth living.
God
has promised to be with you, so don’t settle. Go and attempt the impossible for
him.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Joshua 2
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