God’s Idealism meets Our Human Reality
Today we get to read
about the division of the land. I’ll be
the first to confess that this chapter isn’t the most exciting or interesting
to read. It’s also not the world’s most
inspiring text upon which to blog – as evidence by the shortness of the post
here today.
But …
Here’s something
really interesting for us to ponder. Do
you realize that even the whole way through the reign of David and Solomon that
these borders mentioned here are never realized? In Numbers 34 God tells the Hebrew people of
His plan. The ultimate goal is never
reached.
Here in this chapter
we understand this to be God’s ideal division of the land. As long as the Hebrew people went into the
land, followed God’s direction, and did not stray from His path this would have
been the proper division of the land.
But this was not to
be. The Hebrew people, like us, never
realize God’s ideal. We get stuck
somewhere in between doing God’s will and being tempted away from God by the
world. It is just a poor statement of
the reality of the human condition. Our
sinfulness often keeps God’s ideal plan from taking place.
Today I don’t have
much else to say. I’m going to spend the
rest of my day pondering just how far my life pales in comparison to God’s
ideal for my life. I’m not going to do
it in a pity-party kind of way, but in a realization that there is so much more
territory out there that God wants me to claim for Him – yet like the Hebrew
invaders into Canaan I just can’t quite seem to get there. I’m going to ponder how I’ll always have my Philistines,
my Tyre, and my Sidon around to show me that I have work to do.
In the end, I am no
better than these Hebrew invaders of Canaan.
I suppose we’ve all got work to do.
We’ve all got issues in our life that we just can’t seem to
conquer. We’ve all got areas in our life
that we just can’t muster up enough internal drive to do what it takes to give
that area to God. Lord willing, someday
we shall all get to see the ideal of God.
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