Joshua – (A Personal Encounter) 1

A Personal Encounter from the book of Joshua

(Over the next few days I will post some observations from the book of Joshua in the form of a story as encounters of a man in the first person)

We’re through, I have managed the trip through a dried up river that only the day before had been overflowing its banks. Don’t ask me the detail, all I know is that the water flowing down was cut off at some point about 14 miles (Joshua 3:16) upstream at a place called Adam. I was beginning to realise that the God I had been bought up with, the one my forefathers had called God Almighty, Elshadi, was actually more capable than I had given Him credit for. There was something in the fact that this river had been cut off from Adam. Adam to me was always related to this person in the far reaches of time that had disobeyed God and had caused a whole heap of problems for all mankind down the ages. Yet here I was living through an experience where there seemed to be some kind of sign and connection which said all that has gone before has now ceased and has ‘been cut off’ . This God, Elshaidi, seemed to be making some kind of statement; all your past is forgiven and forgotten, it has been cut off from Adam.

The journey was quite an eventful one. We had just been told 3 days (Joshua 1:11) before to get all our belongings together and be ready with our bags packed, our tents down and our camels loaded because we’re moving out.

That in itself was no mean feat, I can tell you. By the time I had got all my livestock together, organised the wife and kids, packed my camels and dismantled my home I am not sure it was all worth it. You see, we had been promised this “promised land” for as long as I could remember. My parents used to talk about it and the word on the street was that God was displeased with us as a community because my parents generation had really messed up and had refused to go any further in the quest for a better life and had even mooted the fact that they might be better off if they had never left Egypt.

It was quite amazing when we all had got to the other side of the Jordon river, we were all milling about unsure what to do next when we saw some of our leaders taking stones from the dry river bed (Joshua 4:3) , where the priests were standing with the ark, and bring them up to where we were standing. There was great excitement as we all knew that a miracle had just taken place which was why we had crossed over on dry land and we all guessed that Joshua, our leader was about to make an altar, a memorial to remind us, and those that would follow, about this great miracle of salvation, the release from our wilderness to our promised land. I really hope that future generations recognise that they all need to be released from their wildernesses.

What I realised in that moment was that this God, Elshaidi, was interested in me. I had heard about Him through my parents and my other tribe members but it was just hearsay. I knew I had to check this God out for myself, after all this Elshadi had kept us alive with manna and quails and now they had performed some major feat, drying up the river. Well I had never heard or seen anything like it before.

What I knew was that my life would not be the same again.

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