Moses and the Promised Land

Moses speaks to the people... on the edge of the Promised Land  (Deut 30)

"Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
  "But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.
  "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

They were finishing the long journey to their Promised Land.   They were almost there, just a little more to go.   They could see the land they had been waiting so long – so long – to get to.   They had travelled for forty years – and countless generations – to get right where they were now!   Forty years…   four decades.     It was just over the rise, on the other side of the mountain… “the land flowing with milk and honey”, that’s  the phrase they used as they told  their remembered stories – stories of a time not yet fulfilled – used to describe how good and plentiful the land was.    And it was theirs, promised to them from generations ago – by God –  to the descendants of their spiritual father Abraham.  

And Moses stopped them!    “Here you are”, he said.   “Look behind you.   Look behind you – that’s where curse dwells.    Remember your slavery!    That’s death.   You are leaving death and curse!”    Would they know what that meant… that death and curse was behind them?

Who would understand that?   Maybe a woman who’s been abused, a woman who’s left her abusive partner.     Maybe a woman who’s made the hard, brave, choice to leave death behind… the death of a thousand insults, the death of violence maybe, the kind of death constant fear leaves in the soul.    Scared and alone maybe, she leaves in the middle of the night – as silently and as lightly as she can – while he’s asleep, or in the day when he’s gone – rushing in case he comes home unexpectedly.   She might know what it means to leave curse behind.        

Or the person in NA or AA who knows what it means to be in the death-grip of drugs or alcohol – who knows what curse feels like.    The curse of a promise offering the right hand but delivery the left; giving nothing but pain – a twisted promise that contorts and distorts your mind and everything in it until day turns to night and light turns to dark.   Phillip Seymour Hoffman… just one of many who have paid the ultimate price for not being able to leave this curse behind.   But  many do – they follow the brilliant, wonderful, hopeful, promise of daylight... squeezing it’s way as it can between the cracks of a broken life.       

Generations earlier, what seemed like ages ago, God had promised Abraham that through him, his people would have a new land, a new future for his descendants.   His name was changed – Abram became Abraham.   His wife too – Sarai, became Sarah.    New names representing, among other things, a new vision – a new life.   Oh, what a dream this was… a new future, a better beginning.      

The generations passed; Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son, Jacob – who himself has a transforming name change as well; and went from being Jacob, son of Isaac, to Israel – “One who struggles with God and prevails”!    Israel… the name of the people his children would one day become!    Jacob had 12 sons… whose names would be the foundations for the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.   One of them… number 11, Joseph, would become a great leader in the land of Egypt.   Through his dreams, he became the Pharaoh’s right hand – guiding him and blessing the people in the process.  

And as the story goes, the “children” of Abraham were invited in to the land protected by Joseph’s dreams and Pharaoh’s leadership.    As the generations went on, the memory of Joseph continued the bond both guests and hosts had established so long ago.   

But a different time came… maybe  decades, maybe centuries later… not suddenly, but slowly, that strong and mighty bond had faded due to inattention, taken for granted.    The story as recorded in the history of the descendants of Israel…  – “There arose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph”.    Yes, there arose a time that knew not the bond these two peoples shared.    And this new time did not favor the sons and daughters of Jacob, grandchildren of Father Abraham.   They fell into a slavery of circumstance, but a slavery none-the-less.    But they had remembered the promise made to them and their children from ages ago.    “Lord, we are slaves in a land not our own… please take us from here to the Promised Land, our land we have yet to live in.    Take us from here...  remember your Promises to us.   Free us and take us to our home!”  

Moses, another child of the Pharaoh – this new pharaoh – was to be the instrument of God’s freedom.   And through him, finally their freedom did come.   They were released one night – a night they had prepared for, a night marked by death and curse, a night still seared in the memories of this people.   And this began their journey through the deserts of death and curse.     

Travelling through the desert wasn’t an easy trip by any sense of the imagination.    It was hard-living; where death crouched waiting around every corner, every shadow.    Panic held at bay only by the notion that death would come quicker if they released themselves into its custody.   It would have been easy to feel lost.   Death indeed.   Nothing good there in the desert.     

Nothing but death and curse.   But the paradox was, this people, in spite of the real dangers, in spite of their complaining and fighting, with each other… and with their God – indeed with their God –…  they would never again know another time where they and their God would be as close; either in closeness of proximity or in honesty of relationship.        

Moses continued – “Curse and death are behind you.   That’s yesterday you’re looking at over your shoulders.  That’s a yesterday that can’t be changed.    Whatever happened there, stays there.    That’s over.      I ask you to look ahead – what do you see?     What do you see?    Land!   Your land!    A new home, a new start.   A new tomorrow.”      

Is he imploring them to choose Blessing and Life over Curse and Death?    “Choose this day!”    Why would he need to implore them?    Wouldn’t their choice be obvious?  

Oh, how hard it is to leave behind what we know – even if it is a curse.    Father Abraham, in your celebration of this promise God had made with you, you did not know what it would cost your people to choose life over death.      

I call her choice brave and hard, since it is not easy to leave the abuser behind.    For those who are not in this situation, it can be very frustrating… “Why don’t you just leave?!”    It is a brave and hard choice because it is usually not easy for people to just leave.    I wish it were.   I know someone who is still young in my eyes and memory, a young woman – in early middle age now – if not chronologically, for sure aged in her soul.    She had a full-ride scholarship to a local university.   But she met a young man whose twisted influence caused her to drop not only school, but friends who cared for her… but most painful of all, her family who loves her still and hopes for return… 12 years still in the grip of a dark cursed promise.    I pray still her desert experience is not 40 years, but I do pray she reaches her promised-land of freedom and peace.   As hard as it may be for her, I still pray she chooses an unknown Promised-Land over the abusive world she’s known so well…  for so long.   

Does it take Iron Will to fight the curse and death of drugs or alcohol?   Iron Will to fight against the curse of addiction… or an even more resolute will to choose life?   Yes it does.   It takes Iron will, and the support of a community that knows the same challenge.    It takes iron will and the support of a community to break the grip one talon at a time – or break free from the cage that holds them in one God-awful, gut-wrenching act of supreme will to live more than to die.   If I don’t do it now, I never will…  even if I know these devils all too well, but don’t remember the one’s I’m jumping into well at all…   I’m jumping NOW anyway!           

Does it take iron will to choose our own Promised-Land, if that Promised-L and is an unknown place?      We often fear the future… we often fear change… even if it is promised, held in the heart as a heaven to be hoped-for.   We fear it enough that someone has to remind us to choose… to make a choice. 

Please… look ahead of you.   Look ahead of you.   You already know what’s behind you.   You know it too well.   You’ve been making your way here for years… have the strength to cross the threshold of a new way.   In spite of the fear, cross… cross…

Ahead of you is Life… the Promise fulfilled… but you have to cross.   It’s there…   it’s there     but you have to choose it.     

Choose this day.