Thursday, January 2, 2014

Better never than late


There is the classic story in the Bible of the Israelites sending 12 spies into the promise land to scope it out and see if it is all that it was hyped up to be.

They come back and say that it is all that it hyped up to be and more.  There is one issue, there are already people living there and they are giants.  Not only giants but the grandchildren of giants!  And to boot, the giants looked at the 12 spies like they were grasshoppers.  Two of the spies say let's go kill the giants and take their land, but the other ten get the people worked up.  Everyone decides God is sending them off to their deaths so they decline the invitation and spend the next forty years in the desert as punishment.

That's the story.  But it's not the story.  The end of the story is left out.  After everybody complains and threatens, Moses talks to God, God condemns them to forty years in the desert, AND THEY DECIDE THEY WERE WRONG.  Better late then never right...  Apparently not, they tell Moses and God they are sorry and head into the promise land to fight the giants, and are unanimously killed like grasshoppers.

Pride and unbelief are spectacularly bad partners.  Their unbelief caused them not to follow Gods promise immediately, then their pride decided they might as well accept God's promise rather than 40 years of wandering.  Nope.  Deals off the table.

I've never been taught that some of God's promises have an expiration date on them,  and if consumed after that date are actually bad for you.  But that seems to be what my Bible is telling me.

Following God is a dangerous proposition, it is only when you concede that not following him is worse that you really hunker in.

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