Walking in the Ways of God
The first of two important chapters in Israelite history — an end and a beginning, a looking back and a looking forward, a wandering people of God and land possession. This chapter is dull, repetitive and offers little to in terms of history, geography or spirituality, but try to enter into their experience and feel their emotions. For forty years they simple ‘went . . .and camped’, but never arrived.
Bearing in mind their average longevity forty years was a long time. Many had been born in the wilderness. Most will have seen relatives die in the wilderness and only a few could ‘remember’ the days in slavery. But all had lived under its shadow and would have an impression of the history: stories of the old days, long since gone and left behind, of courage and privation as they struggled day after day, hopes raised, hopes dashed, and always with a vision of a ‘promised land‘ which never materialised. Now, today, they stand on the threshold of fulfilment.
Think first of the experiences they have gone through: the high points, the low points, the fracas and the moments of cooperation, the joys and the sorrows as they married, bore children and buried their dead, all amid personal hopes and ambitions, some fulfilled, some dashed.
What does their story tell us about them as people? Something perhaps about their adaptability and capacity to change — 40 ‘homes‘ in forty years — or about never giving up when hope burns low, about the need for privacy and interdependence, personal rights versus community needs, freedom and security, the individual and the community.
Two questions. One, standing on the threshold of the promised land, the end of a struggle and the realisation of the dream, how do you sense their predominant emotions? Thrill and satisfaction? Fear and apprehension? What do they expect to happen? Two, what do you think would happen next?