The Otherness of Life

02.23.13

Numbers 13.1-2 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” (ESV)

The directions to Moses were very specific: Send men to spy out the land of Canaan which I am giving to the people of Israel. There wasn’t equivocation, there wasn’t misunderstanding, there wasn’t hesitation: send men to spy out the land. The Lord had made it clear that when He spoke to Moses, it was not as if it was a vision or a dream for He said: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12.6b-8 ESV) No, God was pretty specific with them when He said send spies.

So, twelve men went into the land and spied it out from one end to the other. Two of them went in belief and the other ten went because they were told to…  Two of the men, Caleb and Joshua saw vast resources and potential. The other ten saw the fruitfulness of the land but also the occupants of the land – they thought more about the struggle to overcome than the vastness and richness of the land.

Today as I read I thought of encounters with God: God told them to go spy out the land. In Mark 2, Jesus healed a man and found Himself at odds with the religious leaders who accused Him of blasphemy for the healing and (and He and His men) for not fasting, and for not washing their hands before they ate, and for eating plucked grain on the Sabbath. Here is my initial conclusion: God is neither safe, nor is He predictable.

I’m not sure what or how the Israelites thought they were going to do when they entered the land of Canaan. I’m not sure if they expected God to bring fire from heaven or use some force of nature to drive out the occupants; but when they saw what they were up against, they doubted God’s ability to help them. I’m not sure what the scribes and Pharisees thought when they encountered Jesus, but they doubted His credibility when He didn’t operate within their bounds of tradition or convention. God is neither safe, nor predictable.

But that is Who we encounter when we encounter God: a God who always operates in truth and love and yet calls the small to rout the big, who calls the unconventional to upend the conventional. God is not fooled or foiled by man’s ways and systems. The difficulty always seems to arise when He calls His people to operate outside of those ways and systems. But that is just what God does.

Today, I think about my own faith and my own calling and I realize: I am called to encounter God outside of my conventions and comforts(?) and meet Him in the otherness of life that exists opposed to the way mankind thinks: where I am sent in to meet the impossible and be blown away at how impossible falls apart in the face of improbable.

Father, strengthen me to meet You right where You are, not where I want You to be…