I've begun my adventures in Joshua, and have a really great visual thought to share with you. As Israel begins its first steps into the Promised Land...an amazing moment in their history...the Ark goes before them into the Jordan River. As the priests carrying the Ark stand firm in the center of it, the waters have been withheld and stand in a heap. Just as the people of Jericho have feared (they are about to be obliterated), the Israelite people are walking across DRY ground as their God allows them to cross the Jordan onto the desert plains of Jericho.
For those watching this event occur, there are two amazing things to note. First, these people are dependent on the Lord's leadership. Israel, though great in number, is completely reliant on the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to go before them, leading them in places where they have never been. They do not have scouts leading them, but from afar...it looks like a box is leading them across the Jordan. What Jericho doesn't know, is that the box is the Ark of the Covenant, representing God's presence among His people. It is the Lord who is leading them to Jericho, the thought of which should make Jericho begin to tremble.
Secondly, what the people of Jericho fear is not so much the people themselves, but the God who is parting the waters of Jericho and who has everything under His command. Jericho has already begun to melt away in courage because they've heard the rumors of a God who split the Red Sea to let this people walk through and to then drown the armies of the great Egyptian Pharaoh. This people is not dependent on a far off God like their false Baal, but He is in the midst of Israel and is headed straight for Jericho. Consider the hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Jordan at one time. A sea of movement around one immovable object at the center of the river. The Ark stands unmoved. It is the Lord's presence that allows these people to move forward, who is commanding the natural elements of the earth to do what they naturally do not do. Everything is operating around the immutability of this one object, this one presence...the Lord of all the earth.
Jericho should be shuddering, and so should we! This is our God! He is not our puppet to bow to our wants. He is the Lord by which we move forward in every endeavor of life. He stands immutable while the movement of our lives crosses the Jordan. I like that visual...that everything else is moving and acting upon the very command and breath of God, while He remains unmoved and unchanged.
Have a sit, and remember that One stands unmoved in the midst of what you face today.
© 2006 by Kendra Hinkle.
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