Same Old, Same New
Joshua 5:10-12
While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased …”
One thing’s been true ever since the Spirit hovered over the chasm of darkness in that infinite gulf before Genesis 1:2, and it’s the fact that we’ll never get His redemptive work down to a science. Cartographers can’t map out the boundaries of His cosmic advancement. Meteorologists can’t predict the movements of His thunderings. Philosophers can’t grasp even the bottom rung of that Jacobian ladder into the sacred mysteries. Mathematicians can’t crack the overt numerological codes imbedded into nature and expressed throughout Scripture. We’re all just little kids playing around in the sandbox of divine wonder. In fact, think of it, friend: how well can you document the movements of the Spirit in your own ancestry? Tell me: what was God doing in the church during your great-grandparents’ day? What cultural battles pressed on their faith? What fresh insight did He teach them during their particular trials? And what about your great-great grandparents and their parents before them and on and on down the line? Even if you’ve done extensive research into the history of your own forebearers, your knowledge amounts to a torn-off fragment with a barely legible, scribbled-out sentence from a scroll that’s about six thousand miles long.
So much for knowledge of the past. But what about the work God is doing right now, today, in preparation for tomorrow? How will God advance His Church in the next generation, when your kids are all grown up, and when they enter terrain you can’t foresee? The one thing we know for certain amidst the constant flux, the one hope we fix our faith upon through every generation, is this vow from our Lord: “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” New fruits will increase; old manna will cease. But Christ is the LORD of the harvest!
Today, whether Heaven’s bounty falls from the sky down or grows from the ground up, it all comes from the same good and faithful hand! So receive it, rejoice in it, and keep pressing onward.