Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“The Lord said to Joshua, ‘You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, October 14, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
As battle plans go, this one is a little…laughable, actually. I mean seriously. March around the city with the ark, blow the shofars (trumpets of rams’ horns) a bunch of times, shout, and the walls will just spontaneously collapse. If I were a soldier in Joshua’s army, I might be thinking, “Cuckoo.” Except I’d already seen the Jordan river part. You know, among other mind-blowing miracles. So maybe I’d just be like, “Yeah, cool. Let’s do it.”
The fact is that when God is involved, the craziest-seeming action can actually be world-changing. I heard a story about a church that was dying. So instead of desperately pulling out all the stops to try to fill the pews, the just said, “Okay. Let’s just go out with dignity and in the time we have left, let’s do service.” They started working directly in the community in a number of different places. Suddenly, people started noticing—"Hey, these people are living their faith instead of just trying to preserve their tradition.” Folks trickled into worship on Sundays. I don’t know how the story ends—maybe the church did close after all. But often times God calls us to go against “what we’ve always done” in order to create outcomes that are beyond our wildest imaginings.
When have I been called to think ‘outside the box’ to address a problem?
