Wednesday, February 25

Scripture: Moses wrote down their starting points, stage by stage, by command of the Lord; and these are their stages according to their starting places. (Numbers 33:2).

Observation: Most of Numbers 33 is a record of Israel’s meandering nomadic journey to the Promised Land, starting with the exodus out of Egypt and ending with encampment on the east side of the Jordan river, opposite Jericho, from whence the Israelites will finally enter the Promised Land after a 40-year wait. Moses can see the Promised Land from the opening of his tent flap; it’s just sitting there on the western horizon, on the far side of the Jordan, rolled out like a flattened scroll. But Moses knows he will never step foot there: the Promised Land is his to behold, not attain. So, with the mixed feelings of a leader who can be proud of how far his people have come while knowing with a heavy heart how much farther they must go without him, Moses writes down in step-by-step fashion how the Israelites came to be here, east of the Jordan. Numbers 33 reads like the diary of a ship’s captain: first we set out from here, then we camped here, then camped here, and so on. Moses provides a running list of camp sites with minimal commentary on what happened to the Israelites throughout the journey. This archive is made of geographic locations, not stories, and made “by command of the Lord” hinting that God wanted this running list of locations to be protected from the pencil eraser of history.

Application: God wants Israel to remember their story, the epic tale of how they got from slavery to sovereign kingdom. Implicit behind Numbers 33, and indeed behind the entirety of the Bible, is the desire on God’s part that humans should remember our stories, our own epic tales of how we got from “back there” to “right here.” Every person is Moses in this way. We could each sit down at the tent flap of our lives and reminisce on our meandering journeys. We might provide a little commentary for each stop on the journey, but most of the tale of our lives would be the “what” and the “where” of the waypoints: this happened to me here, and oh yeah, this happened to me next, and then this, and this, and so on. A record of this sort is enshrined in Scripture at God’s own command, showing that God wants us to remember our stories. Why? In the case of Numbers 33, God wants the archive to be protected and passed down so that Israel never forgets from whence they came. But I am under no delusion that someone a thousand years from now would care to read the archival record of my life, yet the desire of God that I should remember my story remains. Why? In the case of the typical human, God wants us to remember the tales of our own life stories and God’s own story in real time running together, so that we would understand who we have become and begin to see God’s presence and guidance in the entire epic journey of self. It is for knowing who we are and who God always has been that we heed the desire of God’s heart to remember how we got here.

Prayer:

Most of the tale of my life is lost to me, but not to You. Gone is the would-be mental archive of what I ate for lunch last Thursday and what my youngest child said to me before she went to sleep last night and the last words my grandfather spoke to me. You remember, but I can’t. But as I sit in the tent flap of my life, much of the journey behind me and a horizon containing unknowable adventures and disasters and mundane before me, there are stops along the way that I can see as if they were happening right here, right now. The moments my children were born and the human population grew by one; the feeling of a ring slide onto my left hand ring finger; embarrassing my parents in front of the church while they lit the Advent candles and I pretended I could hide behind the pillar holding up the Advent wreath and play peek-a-boo with the congregation; the baby born too early whom I baptized with hospital-grade sterile water; the sound of my beloved’s voice on the phone after her car was knocked off the road: these and more I remember, and as I do, I see how I became me and how You made me, me, and my mind likes to distinguish between the two but my heart knows they are conjoined twins, and I begin to glimpse the eternity of your presence and guidance in my life every step of the way, for where my memory fails, Your love does not, and doesn’t remembering that make the forgetting of the rest worth it? Onward we go: amen.