Put Your Big Toe In

I love the story of Joshua and the Israelites crossing the Jordan. Picture this: you and your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, first cousins once removed, second cousins twice removed, great aunts, third cousins thrice removed, great uncles of your eighth cousins nine times removed etc. etc. - your very extended family - wander around for forty years. You live in tents. You eat birds that fall from the sky every day and bread made from some stuff that the dew leaves behind each morning. You've never seen a field planted with corn or wheat because your wandering is in the desert. You hear stories about how you all used to be slaves. The stories speak of the miracles that set you free, but for you, they're just stories because you're only forty years old. You were born on the road. All you know of miracles is in the stories because although your parents always called the food you eat a miracle, you don't really get it. The birds and the white stuff have always been there. You're used to it. It's part of every day life for you.

Everyone you know is a little road-weary. Walking all day every day may keep you fit, but it sure is exhausting. Everyone who lived the story of your escape has died along the way including the guy who had a direct line to this miracle-performing God. And now, of all things, the pillar of fire that you all follow has led you to the edge of a river whose banks are way overflowing. Great. Now what?

Joshua, the new direct-line-to-God dude, tells you to keep your eye on the box thingy that holds some stone tablets. So, like you've done all your life, you pack up your tent along with your spouse (who is probably your twentieth cousin, eighteen times-removed) and kids and you follow, but they lead you straight to the water's edge. It's flood season. The water is high and flowing fast. You're thinking, "what the heck?" But the priests holding this precious box - this box that contain stones upon which is written a covenant, a promise between your people and God - keep walking. They don't hesitate. You can see that they're going to walk right into those raging waters.

Then the most amazing thing happens. The second the big toe of the first arc-bearer touches the water, all that water disappears! It's gone right before your eyes. You can see where it was. There's a wide canyon there now, but the ground is dry. Dry! The whole lot of you cross what had been a river in flood stage as if it were no different than anywhere you'd walked the past forty years.

What gets me every time I read this story is the faith of the arc-bearers. They were the ones who had to take the first step into the river. I'm afraid that if it had been me, I would have told Joshua that since he's the one who heard from God, he could take that first step. Have you ever seen a river in flood stage? It's kind of scary - that massive amount of water run a muck with no regard for its boundaries. Yet these men, who were not a part of the whole Red Sea thing because everyone in that generation had died, stepped into it, and all it took was that first touch of foot to water for God to act.

A simple step. That's all. They just had to touch the edge of the water. God did the rest.

It makes me wonder where God might be asking me to put in a big toe.