A lot is spoken of in the Bible about the Promised Land. It is a land that flows with milk and honey. It is a land that is fruitful and prosperous. We can note in the Bible how the spies went in and came back carrying grapes on a vine that were so big and plentiful that they had to be carried by two men on a pole. This older testament story is about a land that the people were to conquer and eventually settle. It was a promise that went back to the days of Noah and the promise that the descendants would inhabit the land of Canaan. Literal centuries went by before this promise came to pass. The people had this promise looming over them, which perhaps helped them endure the hardships which they faced as a people along the way, including the many years of slavery in Egypt.
Oddly enough, when the day came that they were to go in and conquer and inhabit the land, many of the people hedged and refused to go. The long awaited promise was within their grasp and they were saying no. Perhaps because the land was already inhabited by other fearsome civilizations, they couldn’t recognize the reality of the moment. This resulted in the necessity for them to wander in the wilderness for about forty more years. This time span was sufficient to cause most of those who had refused to go in, to perish and never live to see the fulfillment of the promise. Here, we can see that the very promise that had sustained generations was rejected. The promise sustained yet another generation, however, who actually came to possess it.
It’s interesting to note that the generation which wandered and then possessed the land was also a generation who were free people who were led in the ways of God. Torah was given for direction and they spent many years practicing it. When the time came to receive their inheritance, they recognized it and took it. The previous generation had believed in the promise just as much, or they never would have followed Moses and left Egypt. That took a leap of faith. The promise of the land was what inspired their faith. Surprisingly, the people that were more focused on the Promised Land which would come at some future, mysterious date, were the one’s who did not go in and possess it. Instead it was those who wandered and found their focus in God and the things of God who eventually just walked in and claimed it.
This tells us something important. If we spend all of our lives waiting for the return of the Messiah and our inheritance, which is the Promised Land of Heaven, we risk the possibility of having put our focus on that mysterious later promise, rather than God and the things of God in the here and now. As we’ve seen this can be a distraction, which can actually lead to missing the promise because we can’t recognize it in comparison to our expectations. What can be done is to learn to walk with God by learning about His ways and His character. Then we’ll simply be conditioned, as the Children of Israel were, to follow Him wherever He leads us, which will of course culminate in that Promised Land.
This life is real and important. Let’s be inspired not to live our lives simply on the promise of heaven, but rather on the promise of today, together, with Christ.
Blessings!
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