Exchanging Our Dream World for this Real One
Numbers 14:9 (verse 12 of 145)
“Just don’t rebel against God! And don’t be afraid of those people. Why, we’ll have them for lunch! They have no protection and GOD is on our side. Don’t be afraid of them!”
This is Joshua and Caleb, brave, brave souls beseeching the Israelites not to be afraid of the people already living in the land God has promised to give them.
At this point in the story of God’s love affair with humankind, the people of Israel have reached the periphery of the Promised Land, and Moses has sent a search party to explore it. They returned with reports of a land flowing with milk and honey, but also a land filled with great, fortified cities, tribes living in the hills and in the valleys, and actual giants living in the land. Joshua and Caleb implore the Israelites not to be afraid.
But other members of the search party tell the Israelites they don’t stand a chance against these people, and fear is like a fire lit and fanned among them. Despite all they have witnessed, despite the daily presence of God in their midst, they give in to fear. And while it’s easy to shake our heads at the wayward Israelites, I feel certain I would have been one of the people quaking in my sandals, wanting to believe, but trusting finally in the empirical evidence and the reports of those that seemed “practical” and an honest assessment. I would have been terrified of Joshua and Caleb’s wild and reckless faith.
At the heart of the Israelites’ rebellion here, I suspect there is more than fear. I think there is a good dose of resentment, too. Perhaps they thought that because God had promised them this land, it was going to be easy. They were not expecting to have to struggle for it and face real fear. Perhaps they thought, as I often have, that being a person of faith means that life will turn out exactly as we hope. And when it doesn’t, we resent God.
In his preface to The Message, Eugene Peterson writes:
Ours is not a neat and tidy world in which we are assured that we can get everything under our control. This takes considerable getting used to—there is mystery everywhere. The Bible does not give us a predictable cause-effect world in which we can plan our careers and secure our futures. It is not a dream world in which everything works out according to our adolescent expectations—there is pain and poverty and abuse at which we cry out in indignation, “You can’t let this happen!” For most of us, it takes years and years and years to exchange our dream world for this real world of grace and mercy, sacrifice and love, freedom, and joy—the God-saved world.1
It has taken me—is taking me—years and years and years to understand that faith does not mean I won’t have to struggle and face awful things. I still want God to be a “Get Out of Jail Free” card—instead of a committed relationship. I don’t question that God is committed, but am I really willing to trust my life, my plans, my dearest loved ones— to God? Like the Israelites, I have wanted God to rescue me from hardship, instead of trusting God to accompany me through it. Joshua and Caleb’s wild and reckless faith is really about courage, which isn’t the absence of fear, but moving forward to face the hard things we must overcome, knowing God is with us.
We know how this story ends. The Israelites spend another 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Only Joshua and Caleb will live to enter the Promised Land. It turns out their wild and reckless faith is the realistic one, requiring us to face and not run from hardship. But it also leads to lives that align with God’s dreams for us—which are so much larger than our own.
The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Numbered Edition by Eugene Peterson. Copyright 2005. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. pgs. 10-11.
