[Hanging Orchids, redux, 2009 JA Van Devender]
Location: Longwood Gardens, Pa.
Joshua 1:8 (NKJV)
8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. ....
The news "out there" is pretty hum-drum which I take to mean that the forces of insanity are behind closed doors conspiring on how to further proceed with the dissolution of civilization. I say that somewhat tongue in cheek and continue to hope that "House of Cards" is more fiction than fact... sometimes it's best just not to think too much about these things.
But what to do to fill the time? Certainly various work related tasks loom... like the crashing surf on a "lee shore" which means that some action has to be taken soon, but what about these moments?
Joshua certainly had tasks to face, things to do, places to go, people to command, arms to take up, discipline to establish, provisions to arrange, intelligence to gather and a host of other activities that required his personal attention. It's interesting that God did not simply say - "Joshua, what are you doing just sitting here... get out there and slay those Canaanites." It is passing curious that His specific instructions were for Joshua to meditate on God's Word day and night... as if those moments would not be stretched to the breaking point with pressing matters. After all, this was war. But God views things differently than we do most often and this was certainly one of those occasions.
Martin Luther once remarked, I forget where, that "I have so much to do today that I will have to spend twice as long in prayer" (or words to that effect). I think God's instructions to Joshua had a parallel intent. We can deal with the stuff that we face haphazardly or we can deal with it wisely. That statement might not be precisely logical, but it generally conveys the point. We can jump in the river and swim without noticing which way the water is flowing or we can view the river with some perspective and enter the water with a greater confidence that we are not going to be bashed against the rapids. So it is with our lives.
God's Word is not now, and never has been, only concerned with future blessed-ness. It is concerned with human flourishing in covenant with God unto the end of God's glory and man's delight. Therefore it is directed toward the "now" of our lives, perhaps first and foremost, to the end that our "now" is lived in terms of our "then" of the future, yes and amen, but "now" as the focus. Therefore it is only to be expected that it is permeated with examples, narrative, propositional truth, poetry, commands, percepts and hints, about how our lives are to be directed toward the end of human flourishing.
Jacob, in a sense, faced the daunting prospect of having to burn Canaan down to the ground in order to redeem it. That bears some thinking ... meditation... understanding. His every action, in order to be efficiently productive toward that end, had to be undertaken in light of God's strategic guidance in His Word. So it is with our lives and we are far more blessed than He.
God has progressivly revealed HIs will throughout the ages and we ride the crest of His fullest revelation of His will and His purposes. We see the world through the lens of Jesus Christ, the crucified One, who as our resurrected Lord, is busy fulfilling the type that Joshua's life embodied. He is busily engaged in war against the principalities and dominions that stain and pervert His rightful realm and we are, under Him, engaged in the day to day skirmishes and prolonged sieges which characterize that war. How can we flourish or pursue human flourishing without understanding His strategy, His tactics, His vision for how that flourishing is to be understood and attained?
What ever we face today, you and I, has present and eternal significance. We may be called to boldness or perseverance or both. We may be called to decisive action or mere probing, tentative investigations to determine the landscape and dispositions that face us. We may be called to build up or tear down, to rejoice with or cry with, to pray all day or only a portion of it, to turn the other cheek or draw our sword... how are we to discern which course or manner to embrace?
Here is where discernment is required in order to flourish and to pursue flourishing and no where can such discernment be attained apart from meditating on God's Word... living with it... chewing on it... thinking about it... carrying it with us and having it frame our immediate as well as our overall life.
God's wisdom is this: His will shall be done... we can undertake to go with His flow or strike out on our own or trust our own devices and wisdom. The end will be the same... the degree of flourishing and joy and confidence we experience in the process will depend on whether we have sought His wisdom first or learned it through the hard lessons we encounter.
Joshua's efforts and Israel's accomplishments in the conquest of the promised land left much to be desired. They started strong and finished wearily and incompletely... their entire future was essentially determined by these few early years. One can easily understand that what they had to learn was that doing it God's way is the only hope we have of flourishing under His rule.
Perhaps that thought might guide us today... in whatever it is that awaits.
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