Our Second Traveling Companion: Caleb
. . . who scouted the route
Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan
(Numbers 13:17)
The children of Israel were on the most daring - and scariest - journey any of us can make: out of slavery, whatever form it takes in our lives, into freedom. As they neared the end of the long trek across the wilderness, Moses sent twelve men ahead to report on the land to which they were headed. They were to bring back answers to six questions, Three had to do with the Promised Land itself (the incentive for making the journey):
1. Was the land good or bad?
2. Rich or poor?
3. Did it contain wood?
And three with the people presently living there (the obstacles the travelers would encounter):
4. Were the people strong or weak?
5. Few or many?
6. Did they live in easily attacked camps or in fortified strongholds?
Those are the questions we who have embarked on a spiritual journey want answered too. What do we know of this promised Land?
1. Will our entering it be good news or bad news for the world? (Will it increase our caring for those around us? Or make us indifferent to "mere earthly matters"?)
2. Will our own life in this land be richer or poorer? (Will we develop, each of us, our own gifts and uniqueness there? Or will we have to surrender our individuality?)
3. Will the land supply all we need? Or will we have to import our building material from elsewhere?
And what about the resistance we will encounter - both interior, in the form of fears and doubts, and exterior, in the reactions of those close to us? Will the opposition be:
4. Violent and traumatic, or easily overcome?
5. Centered on only a few issues, or contesting every step of the way?
6. Temporary, or deeply entrenched?
So the twelve scouts set out. After forty days spying out the green hills of Canaan, they returned to the wilderness camp and reported. All agreed on what they had seen. As for the land, it was infinitely worth possessing: "It flows with milk and honey!"
About the inhabitants the spies were also unanimous: "The people who dwell in the land are strong, the cities are fortified and very large." Not only were the opposing forces numerous and well entrenched, they were made up of giants! "All the people that we saw are men of great stature!"
This was the intelligence report, tantalizing and terrifying-that the advance party brought back. All twelve concurred on the facts. Ten of the scouts summed up the findings with understandable fear: "We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we."
Two, however, Caleb and Joshua, looked at identical information with the eyes of faith: "Let us go at once and occupy this land!"
"Fear is to the devil," someone has said, "what faith is to God." As God uses faith to make us strong, the devil uses fear to weaken and destroy. The fear-filled words of the ten soon had the entire people weeping in terror: "Let us go back to Egypt!"
The devil of fear had done his work; the children of Israel were condemned to forty years of homeless wandering.
Faith versus fear! We long for more of one, less of the other - but how? All twelve spies had been handpicked for courage. What made ten see giants, two opportunity?
The key is not what the scouts saw, but where they stood while they looked. The viewpoint, not the view, made the difference.
"We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers," reported the ten. That's the view from the human perspective, obstacles seen from the standpoint of our own weakness - an insect's-eye view of the situation.
"And so we seemed to them." That's the view through the eyes of the enemy. The Israeli spies could not really have known how the inhabitants of Canaan were reacting in their own hearts. But they looked up at them (so huge!) and read contempt in their bearing (they'll only laugh at us!). They gave the devil more than his due, imagined a far stiffer resistance than in fact ever developed.
Caleb, on the other hand, envisioned the scene through God's eyes. Rejecting the picture painted either from the vantage point of our puny selves or of our powerful-seeming enemies, Caleb focused on the all-sufficiency of God: "If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us."
This month let's ask ourselves, each of us: Where am I standing as I survey the road to all that God has promised? On my own merits? Or on the high ground of His purposes, His desires for me?
Caleb chose that high ground. When we meet him next, in the book of Joshua, he is an old man, sole survivor, with Joshua, of their entire generation: "The Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these forty-five years. . . while Israel walked in the wilderness; and now I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong to this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.
"So now," he says to Joshua, his old fellow scout, give me this hill country" -- the land the two had reconnoitered so long ago. It has still to be wrested from the powerful people living there, but Caleb refuses to shift his attention to the impediments: "It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out."
And with God's help, Caleb did.
Lord of the Journey, give us Your perspective on the trials of the road ahead.
Meet our next companion now >
Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan
(Numbers 13:17)
The children of Israel were on the most daring - and scariest - journey any of us can make: out of slavery, whatever form it takes in our lives, into freedom. As they neared the end of the long trek across the wilderness, Moses sent twelve men ahead to report on the land to which they were headed. They were to bring back answers to six questions, Three had to do with the Promised Land itself (the incentive for making the journey):
1. Was the land good or bad?
2. Rich or poor?
3. Did it contain wood?
And three with the people presently living there (the obstacles the travelers would encounter):
4. Were the people strong or weak?
5. Few or many?
6. Did they live in easily attacked camps or in fortified strongholds?
Those are the questions we who have embarked on a spiritual journey want answered too. What do we know of this promised Land?
1. Will our entering it be good news or bad news for the world? (Will it increase our caring for those around us? Or make us indifferent to "mere earthly matters"?)
2. Will our own life in this land be richer or poorer? (Will we develop, each of us, our own gifts and uniqueness there? Or will we have to surrender our individuality?)
3. Will the land supply all we need? Or will we have to import our building material from elsewhere?
And what about the resistance we will encounter - both interior, in the form of fears and doubts, and exterior, in the reactions of those close to us? Will the opposition be:
4. Violent and traumatic, or easily overcome?
5. Centered on only a few issues, or contesting every step of the way?
6. Temporary, or deeply entrenched?
So the twelve scouts set out. After forty days spying out the green hills of Canaan, they returned to the wilderness camp and reported. All agreed on what they had seen. As for the land, it was infinitely worth possessing: "It flows with milk and honey!"
About the inhabitants the spies were also unanimous: "The people who dwell in the land are strong, the cities are fortified and very large." Not only were the opposing forces numerous and well entrenched, they were made up of giants! "All the people that we saw are men of great stature!"
This was the intelligence report, tantalizing and terrifying-that the advance party brought back. All twelve concurred on the facts. Ten of the scouts summed up the findings with understandable fear: "We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we."
Two, however, Caleb and Joshua, looked at identical information with the eyes of faith: "Let us go at once and occupy this land!"
"Fear is to the devil," someone has said, "what faith is to God." As God uses faith to make us strong, the devil uses fear to weaken and destroy. The fear-filled words of the ten soon had the entire people weeping in terror: "Let us go back to Egypt!"
The devil of fear had done his work; the children of Israel were condemned to forty years of homeless wandering.
Faith versus fear! We long for more of one, less of the other - but how? All twelve spies had been handpicked for courage. What made ten see giants, two opportunity?
The key is not what the scouts saw, but where they stood while they looked. The viewpoint, not the view, made the difference.
"We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers," reported the ten. That's the view from the human perspective, obstacles seen from the standpoint of our own weakness - an insect's-eye view of the situation.
"And so we seemed to them." That's the view through the eyes of the enemy. The Israeli spies could not really have known how the inhabitants of Canaan were reacting in their own hearts. But they looked up at them (so huge!) and read contempt in their bearing (they'll only laugh at us!). They gave the devil more than his due, imagined a far stiffer resistance than in fact ever developed.
Caleb, on the other hand, envisioned the scene through God's eyes. Rejecting the picture painted either from the vantage point of our puny selves or of our powerful-seeming enemies, Caleb focused on the all-sufficiency of God: "If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us."
This month let's ask ourselves, each of us: Where am I standing as I survey the road to all that God has promised? On my own merits? Or on the high ground of His purposes, His desires for me?
Caleb chose that high ground. When we meet him next, in the book of Joshua, he is an old man, sole survivor, with Joshua, of their entire generation: "The Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these forty-five years. . . while Israel walked in the wilderness; and now I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong to this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.
"So now," he says to Joshua, his old fellow scout, give me this hill country" -- the land the two had reconnoitered so long ago. It has still to be wrested from the powerful people living there, but Caleb refuses to shift his attention to the impediments: "It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out."
And with God's help, Caleb did.
Lord of the Journey, give us Your perspective on the trials of the road ahead.
Meet our next companion now >