This is somewhat of a hopeless passage for me. While I respect the people for wanting to make the "right" choice by choosing God, don't they know they will fail? I wonder what it would be like to read this passage without any knowledge of what follows. Do they really choose God? Have these desert wanderers really straightened up? I know what happens and so I wonder why they even chose God to begin with. Some people say that there are only two things that are certain: death and taxes. Can I add failure to that list? We are destined to be failures. That may seem a wee bit defeatist, but I really think we have to recognize the fact that we will fail. The people in the story are so proud and want so badly not to "forsake" God, but what if they had realized their humanness and accepted the fact they could not keep the promise of Joshua 24? I have a poster in my office that at one time I read every day and believed it! Then, somewhere in the last few years, I decided failure wasn't an option and it became a nice decoration. Maybe I need to read it again:
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 3000 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan
God,
Open my eyes to my own humanness. Help me accept me for…me. And out of that acceptance may I truly know the love you have for me and amazing grace that you give.
