Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree: How to Have Courage
This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.
Most people I know are tired of change. It’s going on two years since COVID swept across the globe changing daily life as we knew it. School, family rhythms, work, worship, and relationships are all still adjusting. Fears of a new variant and the winter flu season are causing new travel restrictions and health protocols. Global supply chain disruptions are impacting the availability of cream cheese at bagel shops in NYC.
What do you do when your life has been disrupted and the things you’ve counted on aren’t there anymore?
Day Eleven – Courage: Joshua 1:1-11
“After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, 2 “My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites… Be strong and courageous…”
Can you imagine what it would have been like to lose a leader you’ve been following for over forty years? A few years ago, our church had a sudden leadership transition of a senior leader who’d served for sixteen years, less than half of the time Moses led the Israelites in the wilderness, and it was still profoundly disorienting. All of the rhythms of life that would have been meaningful to this community, from gathering food to managing health, from distributions of work to waging war, had been influenced and shaped by Moses. And now, Moses was gone.
The work ahead of Joshua is even more daunting than it seems. Moses’ death outside of the Promised Land was the result of his disobedience, but it was also a stark reminder that the great work Moses had set out to accomplish remained incomplete, even after forty years. Joshua must have wondered how he was going to be able to complete Moses’ work. Perhaps that’s why the phrase, “Be strong and courageous,” is repeated so often throughout this section.
God’s call to Joshua to have courage is not an appeal to rugged individualism, denial, or recklessness. Ammon Hennacy famously wrote, “Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world…”.
The pace and amount of change in our lives does not show any sign of slowing down. Perhaps we are all a little like Joshua. The old ways are behind us. The change ahead of us is daunting. God grant us courage, love, and wisdom, not so that we can bend the world to our will, but that we might offer life to the change weary.
How have you grown in courage, love, and wisdom?