I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. – Exodus 33:2

Today's Scripture Reading (October 20, 2021): Exodus 33

English novelist Georgette Heyer in "Venetia," argues that "As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do." She is probably right. Making a promise not to do something seems to heighten the need to do that very thing, or at the very least, it puts our focus on that "thing," so it is all about which we seem to think. However, promising to do something often provokes an opposite response. Then we often seem to lose the urgency, continually putting off until tomorrow the fulfillment of the promise that could have been accomplished today. Either way, regardless of what the promises might be about, promises are often hard to keep.

And maybe that is the reason that even when someone promises us something, we remain skeptical. Who knows whether the promise will be kept, but we often don't expect that it will. The best way to keep a promise is never to make one.

However, God is a God of the Promise. He is a God who continually makes promises to his creation. But more importantly, he is a God who keeps his promises. And one of the biggest promises he made was that he would give a particular parcel of land in the Middle East to the descendants of Abraham. For Israel, that land became known as the "Promised Land" because it was land that had been promised to them by God.

God takes Israel out of Egypt, and he intends to take them back to the land that he had promised to Abraham. It won't be easy. The land is not empty. But then, it wasn't empty when God promised it to Abraham. The land promised to Abraham was the stretch of the Fertile Crescent that lay along the south-eastern coast of the Mediterranean. As part of the "Fertile Crescent," sometimes called the "Cradle of Civilization" which extends from Egypt up the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean Sea and then follows the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers over to the Persian Gulf, the Promised Land was part of a stretch of land that was in high demand.

But God promised, just as he had led Israel out of Egypt against the overwhelming forces of the Egyptian military, he would do the same as the nation entered the Promised Land. The land was occupied by the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, but they were no match for the God of Abraham.  God had the ability and the intention to keep his promises.

But Israel had to believe that God would keep his promises, and regardless of how often God had kept his promises in the past, for Israel, and often for us, believing God's promises for the future just seemed to be a "bridge too far" for them to accept.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Exodus 34