Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6 (NIV)
Moses Was Not Going In
The rings have to come off, so she works hers over the knuckle and puts them in her daughter’s hand, and her glasses go on top of them. She has spent all week telling people this is routine, and her daughter has spent all week agreeing with her.
A whole country stood on the wrong bank of a river and heard be strong and courageous. The man saying it was a hundred and twenty years old, and he’d already told them he couldn’t lead them any longer and would not be crossing the Jordan. Then he gave them the rest of it, that the Lord your God goes with you, he will never leave you nor forsake you. Afterward he called Joshua up and said it to him by name, in front of everybody.
So the promise of company came from a man who was not going in.
The land was occupied and they knew it. There were walls in there, and people already living in the houses they’d been promised. Moses commands courage and names the fear along with it, because there was plenty in there to be afraid of.
Christians a long way on from that river were given the same sentence, with God saying it: Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.
She has been promised company on the way in. It held for the people who did not come back out the other side, and it was holding on the way in, before anybody knew which of them that would be.
I’ve never known what to say to somebody in a hallway like that, and I’m not sure anybody does.
Her daughter is holding the rings, with the glasses on top of them.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, some of us go in this morning and the rest of us wait out in the hall holding the rings. You said you’d go with us and never leave us or forsake us. Go in with the ones going in. Let the first voice any of us hears coming up out of it be a steady one.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
