Joshua - Just one thing: Chapter 16

Miracle on 34th Street was magical for me as a child. In a jaded world of unbelief, a little girl named Susan believes in a Macy's Santa Claus, of whom she has requested a house, with very particular specifications. The last scene, Christmas morning, shows her and the two disillusioned adults in her life, Fred and Doris, driving down a street where Kris Kringle has sent them, ostensibly to avoid traffic on their way home. Susan spots the house of her dreams with a for sale sign in front of it, and bolts out of the car. Inside the house, everything is exactly as she had drawn it for Santa. Fred, still not quite "getting" what is already perfectly clear to the child, thinks that perhaps his own lawyerly cunning had something to do with the mysterious apparition. Just then, they spot a cane leaning against the fireplace that looks identical to the one Kris, aka Santa, sported.

I get that old feeling again when I read Joshua 16. There was a time when the Promised Land was just a promise, an idea, a twinkle in God's eye. Abraham left everything he knew for that idea. Many must have thought him mad, mad as little Susan. Hebrews says he "was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." But years elapsed, and children were born, and still no city. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and aliens on the earth" (Hebrews 11:10,13).

Moses never touched it. The closest he got was to stand on a mountain and have his breath taken away by the sight of it. Then he passed the baton to Joshua, the disciple-warrior to whom was left the great privilege of the surveyor's task---of marking out terrestrial space points and boundaries and trigonometry and distances and angles of the tribal portions. The chapter is full of this kind of detail:

"The allotment of the people of Joseph went from the Jordan by Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, into the wilderness, going up from Jericho into the hill country to Bethel. Then going from Bethel to Luz, it passes along to Ataroth, the territory of the Archites. Then it goes down westward to the territory of the Japhletites . . ." (verses 1-3).

Many a "through-the-Bible-in-one-year" reader has groaned through this repetitive notation in a hurry to get to more exciting chapters. But I dare say that the person who was recording the words of Joshua 16 3,000 years ago had a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

Read the next part in this series.

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