By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith
Yesterday at Informal Family Service, we talked about the story of the children of Israel spying out the land of Canaan. This story came to mind because a new school year is about to begin and many students, parents, and teachers face the reality of a new school year with a combination of excitement and apprehension.
When the twelve spies spied out the land, they found things that appealed to them and things that terrified them. They brought back a cluster of grapes so huge it had to be carried between two people, but they said, “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there” (Numbers 13:27, 28). For ten of the twelve spies, the fortified cities and the giants far outweighed anything good that they had seen in the land.
Whether we’re facing a new school year, a new job, a new diagnosis, or a new phase of life we can pretty much guarantee that there will be entrenched, fortified, negative mindsets to reckon with and powerful selfish loves to confront. There will also be genuine goodness to enjoy. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, had a different perspective than the other ten: they said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. …. If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey’” (Numbers 13:30, 14:8). Which spies’ report are you listening to?
One of the people in the discussion at the end of the service pointed out that we often think of self-examination as being about identifying evils that we need to shun, but accurate evaluation of what is within ourselves will also notice the genuine goodness that the Lord has given each of us and the goodness that He wants to give us through the process of going through whatever is in front of us.
The Lord does not promise us that the school year will be easy, but He does promise to help us deal with the hardest parts — the falsities of hell in our minds and the selfishness of hell in our hearts. And He does promise that we can gain a little bit truer perspective on life and can find a bit more genuine love from the Lord in our hearts, as we work to be strong and of good courage and face whatever is in front of us.