… but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance. – Joshua 18:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 14, 2019): Joshua 18

In his epic novel “Crime and Punishment,” Fyodor Dostoevsky argues that “taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” Dostoevsky reveals what is a reality for most of us. And if we do not feel that way, we know someone close to us who does. We fear change, even when change is good. And maybe that is part of the reason that many people’s New Year’s resolutions are no longer in force a short two weeks into the New Year. As people, we find great comfort in the way that things have always been done and change, which includes a fear of the unknown, is simply scary. When times get tough, we always return to the way we have always responded to things in our lives. There is great comfort in tradition.

When considering the taking of Canaan, one of the questions that we need to ask is why had seven tribes not “received their inheritance.” Were they unable to displace the inhabitants of their inheritance? Or was there some other reason. Less than half of the tribes of Israel had received their land. And the most obvious reason for the delay is simply this; the tribes were afraid of taking that next new step. They were afraid of change.

No one in Israel had any idea what it meant to live in permanent dwellings. They had existed as a large group of people living in tents, moving about the land for their entire lives. Every morning when they rose, they looked toward the Tabernacle to see if today they would be packing up and moving on, leaving the area for someplace new. They were nomads, and it was not that they had grown to like the nomadic life; they didn’t know any other way to live. They had lived all of their lives as nomads.

And now they were being asked to change. Israel was being given a specific plot of land where they would be able to build a house and farm, growing grains in season and feeding and caring for their animals throughout the year. They would no longer move from place to place. They would possess the land that they would be able to pass down to their children. And this was something that they had never experienced.

It was not that this change bad. In many ways it was good. But it was a life that they had never experienced, and the descendants of Israel were finding it hard to adapt to the change.

Change is hard, but it is also necessary. I am convinced that God continually leads us into change as we grow more and more like Christ. And often we reject the change god places into our lives and fall back on tradition because it is comfortable, and not because the traditional is what God desires from us. We all have to face change as we grow in our faith. It is an inevitable part of life. And how we react to that change is often the best descriptor of how much faith we really have placed in our God.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Joshua 19