Candy Bars

Deuteronomy 31:6 ESV

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

Moses will continue his swan song for a few more chapters. Saying good bye to the final chapter of his life. Giving God’s people as much as he can so that they might, perhaps, stay faithful a little longer. Such is the book of Deuteronomy. As a man comes to the end of his call, he reflects more on what has been done and what the meaning of it has been. He repeats himself twice hear, and not because he is one hundred and twenty years old, rather because Joshua is eighty. The depth and magnitude of what lays behind Moses and what lays ahead of Joshua is a task of such proportion it is for naught to try and quantify it here. Moses reiterates this statement in verses seven and eight as well. Later as the book of Joshua begins it is God speaking to Joshua and he says it twice to him in Joshua chapter one verse six and again in verse nine. Later the people tell Joshua he needs to be “strong and courageous” in verse eighteen of the same chapter.

This last week a little boy praised God that his friend was able to earn a candy bar in Sunday School. It was sweet and cute. Watching as a boy sees the struggle of his friend and yearns for his success even as he can’t win the battle for him. Longing to help but only able to rejoice when victory is finally won, struck me hard on Sunday. We never know how hard another’s life is. Marvin Olasky recently wrote a book about his father, Lament for a Father, in it he walks through the metamorphosis of his dad into the man he remembers. Dwelling a little on what he assumes his father did while stationed in Germany as a Jew who can speak German, immediately following WWII. How his dad had a passion to preserve Jewish culture even as he would reject the orthodox Judaism.  All this in an effort to understand his father. To understand another man. As he wound through the decades of his father’s life you start to feel and long to give grace to such a fallen man. Even one that only once played catch with his son.

We pulled off onto a gravel road. Nothing but fighting and bickering had been coming from the backseat for the five minutes they had been sitting together, and so timeout, nose against the truck was what awaited the two in the backseat. Made and frustrated he exits the back, firmly declaring his displeasure with me, and then choosing to add some stomp into it he falls victim to the reality that gravel on top of pavement yields. Now skinned up a little and crying he puts his nose against the truck (don’t worry both were in time out), still firmly declaring his dissatisfaction with this arrangement.  Such was the beginning of the morning of errands in Salina.

This is why the praise of one boy for another means so much. Even as we laugh a little at such a silly thing, it is not silly to a little boy who struggles for the marginal level of self-control most of us take for granted. As I read Deuteronomy this morning, I did snicker a little as I could only wonder at the level of meekness Joshua must have been displaying that Moses twice, God Twice, and the people of Israel once, all had to encourage him to be “strong and courageous” at his beginning.

Failure comes readily to the people of God. For some inconceivable reason God picks some of the biggest losers to be in it and then calls the prime offenders to lead it. Broken people all. Grace is needed. The trauma that the person you share a pew with may be known to you, but the depth and scars of it won’t be fully grasped by you. Rejoice with them in the silly little things. You don’t know how much strength and courage was needed to conquer such a little thing.

Cruce, Dum Spiro, Fido