Consider this

            After teaching three or four lessons per week for almost 22 years, there are not many things in the Bible that I have not seen.  Imagine my surprise, then, when last week I came across a story that I had never heard before (and I am guessing you have not either).              Joshua and the people of God have just crossed into the Promised Land and have successfully conquered the first two towns; Jericho and Ai.  Momentum is on their side.  If I was Joshua, I would continue to attack.  Instead, Joshua marches his people to the centre of the land, to a place called Shechem.             Shechem sits in a valley between two mountains that are about a mile apart.  When Joshua arrives, he takes half of the people and puts them on one mountain (Mount Gerizim) and he takes the other half and put them on the other mountain (Mount Ebal).  Then, “Joshua read all the words of the law—the blessings and the curses—just as it is written in the Book of the Law” (Joshua 8:34).   

            When 61-year-old potato farmer, Cliff Young, arrived at the starting line wearing overalls and work boots, people wondered if he was lost.   After all, he was standing among a group of elite, young athletes who were about to run the 875 kilometers (544 miles) from Sydney to Melbourne, Australia.   Young was not lost, though.   In fact, he was about to do something incredible.             Almost as soon as the gun sounded, Young was behind.   He ran with a very slow, loping pace that made observers think that he could not last for more than an hour.   Mile after mile, though, he just kept running.   Near the end of the first day, when the other competitors stopped for the night, Young kept running. The next day, he found himself with the leaders again and, by the end of day two, after running most of the night again, he was in the lead. In the end, only 6 runners completed the entire distance, with Young ahead of them all.   Incredibly, his time of five days, fif

“Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in’” (Joshua 6:1-5). On paper, that does not sound too bad, but I think the reality of it must have been different.   I can see the Israelites walking around the wall the first day saying, “Hmm, we must be scouting the place today.   That is good!   Maybe we will find a weak spot where can attack.”   I can also see the residents of Jericho looking over th

When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight…In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever”... And they are there to this day (Selected portions of Joshua 4:1-9).             God knows that we are a forgetful bunch.   A crisis comes and so we pray and ask for help.   The help comes, the crisis passes and then we sort of forget about it.   Then the next crisis comes and we act as if we have never seen God act before.   We worry and fret that