On Our Way Up to Canaan Land, Part I

One hears often enough from bible preachers how it took the Chosen People forty years to reach the promised land after the escape from Egypt, though it was a journey that could have been made in a matter of days rather than years. The preacher will tell you that this was because they were not ready to enter the promised land. He will tell you, moreover, that the only thing keeping them from a timely arrival at their destination was their stubbornness, their lack of faith.

It appears that the people went everywhere but the promised land during those forty years. They stopped for weeks of feasting on manna, and then on tiny birds. They stopped with parched throats, gasping for water in the middle of the desert (when there was likely a perfectly handy water faucet perhaps a mile further down the road). They stopped to see various marvels--a bitter stream made pure by a fallen tree, a vertical cloud by day, a fire by night, a bronze serpent on a pole which would heal those who gazed upon it, and the radiant face of Moses himself, just down from the mountain, the very sight of which was unbearable to the people. Behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.

Though God was with the people, it turned out that He made such a racket of thunder and lightening, fire and storm, and spoke, as it were, so loudly, that the people begged Moses to make Him go away, to meet with him thenceforth on one hilltop or another where there would not be such a confounded conflagration every time He and Moses spoke.

Well, the preachers are right. The destination of mankind has never been very far away, and the road has never been other than straight and narrow. It's just that we cannot see it, we cannot bear it. We must through the better part of our lives be wayward children. It is only as we near the end that our vision begins to clear, that the scales begin to fall away, and we find ourselves looking down from Golgotha, having entered at last into love.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.