Remember the Shadows

In Joshua 3 the people are finally going to start moving into the Promised Land, but before they do God does something incredible that helps remind them how powerful and amazing their God is.  They need to cross the Jordan River, and while God could have achieved this in any way he wanted, including some perfectly simple man-made ways, He instead chooses to do it in a way that would remind them of how He brought them out of Egypt.  He instructs Joshua to send the priests into the river first with the Ark of the Covenant.  When they step into the water it stops flowing (in a strange detail it tells us about the town where the water "piled up in a heap" - I would have loved to see that).  The priests stop in the middle of the dry riverbed, and the people all cross over to the other side.  As the Message says at the end of chapter 3 - "the whole nation was across the Jordan, and not one wet foot."

Then in chapter 4 God commands Joshua to have a man from each tribe go and gather a rock from the riverbed and put them together to build a memorial, something the people can always look back on to be reminded of what God had done.  In a way this is a double memorial.  Not only would they remember how God allowed them to cross the Jordan, but that would also remind them of how God brought them across the Red Sea on dry ground as well.  This is certainly not the only time that someone builds something to be reminded of what God had done.  Whether it was putting these rocks together, or very often giving a special name to a place where God did something, the people of Israel were constantly being given reminders so that they wouldn't forget the amazing things God had done.

One of the most meaningful songs for me is called Shadows by the David Crowder Band.  Not only do I just enjoy the song, but God used it in a really cool way in my life about 10 years ago.  It goes right along with this passage from Joshua.  The chorus says:

When shadows fall on us
We will not fear, we will remember
When darkness falls on us
We will not fear, we will remember
When all seems lost
When we are thrown and we're tossed
We'll remember the cost
We're resting in the shadow of the cross

There are shadows falling all around us right now.
It is a crazy time not just in our community, but in our nation and the world.
We need to do what God had Joshua and the people do - we need to remember.
We need to remember what God has done for us.
We need to remember the ways that God has always taken care of us and provided for us.
We need to remember that our God can do anything, and that includes bringing us through this current crisis.
That doesn't mean we ignore it, or ignore all the guidance we are being given about keeping social distance and things like that.
But it means that we have a hope that is beyond all of those things.
We put our trust in something greater than all of that.
We look back and see all the amazing things God has done - both in His Word and in our own lives.
And when all this is over, this will become one more thing that we look back on someday and see how God took care of us, how He carried us through.  And we will be reminded again of how amazing He is and how much He loves us.

Love you guys - see you soon.