Devotional: Concerning Caleb and Nourishing Hope

I've been working on a book now for close to a year. It's still in the early drafting phase and I have to pause frequently to do more research. I didn't even know it would be a book when I first started on it and the transition from a general theology podcast to a book I believe can and should be published has been slow and arduous work.

I'm grateful for my wife, who's given me the time and freedom to do this. She's been my partner through our years of ministry and now our transition into this process. At the same time, her generosity in giving me time and support to do this means that we are singularly reliant on her income to provide for the both of us. It is not a limitless situation, but a temporary opportunity to explore a dream.

Her job is good and provides some truly amazing benefits that we've never experienced before, it has also felt frequently tenuous and potentially ephemeral (hevel for all you Hebrew fans). Sexism and racism, while obviously condemned in their corporate culture, remain deeply entrenched forces among some of the management teams of her organization.

I don't want to go too in-depth into her story, because it's hers and not mine to share, but she is currently up for a promotion to another team that would take her from one of the teams with moderately problematic leadership and onto a team with more progressive, egalitarian leadership.

She's tried to transfer out several times before, but nothing has ever quite worked out. As we stare down the barrel of this latest hope and potential disappointment, there is a strong, nearly overwhelming desire, to resign ourselves to cynicism.

There is a moment in the Hebrew Bible, also called the Old Testament, that speaks to my present circumstances.

Early in the history of Israel, when Moses leads the fledgling nation out of Egypt, they face a period of insecurity as they wander through the desert wilderness. When they reach the promised land, they see that it is wondrous and good, but also occupied by a powerful warrior people they compare to giants.

As the story goes, most of the scouts sent to explore this promised land return fearful and consider the task before them to be impossible. Two of the scouts, however, believed that it could be done. The first was Joshua, Moses’ personal assistant. The second was Caleb, who could perhaps best be thought of as Joshua’s assistant.

I was always awed by the faith and courage of these two men and wondered if I could be like them. I never really considered myself like Joshua, but always felt imitating Caleb might be an achievable goal. After all, he was kind of like an assistant to the regional manager and if Dwight K. Schrute can do it, then anyone can.

But now here I am, working on a book I believe to be important, but uncertain whether or not anyone else will feel the same way. I’m hopeful for my wife and fearful of continued rejection. To top it off we remain in the midst of a time of severe economic insecurity, the earliest rumblings of climate catastrophe, a deeply divided political landscape and a church that seems more concerned with othering people than loving them. The hurts, disappointments and dread my wife and I have faced are no more severe than what most others are also dealing with at the moment. We seem to stand on the brink of a promised land, but with giants blocking our path at every turn.

How do we maintain hope when nothing in our life seems to indicate things will get better?

For the Israelites, after even a short time in the wilderness, it began to look more appealing to return to slavery in Egypt than to move forward into the promises God had for them. It can be easy to call them half-hearted and querulous, but let’s put ourselves in their shoes for just a moment. They’d been slaves in Egypt who, ever since Moses turned back up, had faced ever increasingly difficult labor from their Egyptian masters. They’d experienced food and water insecurity, which can make anyone a bit testy at the best of times. They’d floundered in fear at the terrifying presence of God at Mount Horeb. Now, they were faced with a giant, warrior race with whom they’d have to do actual battle in order to have a home. If they went into battle, there was a very real chance they would die.

From where they stood, things had just gotten steadily worse for their entire lives and it just didn’t make any sense for things to get any better now. As insane as it may sound, wouldn’t slavery in Egypt be preferable than being killed on some quixotic quest for a new home?

I can feel their uncertainty in my bones. I want to believe that things could get better, that this book might actually help some people out; that my wife could get a better job with a better team. It’s almost too much to hope for though. In the back of my mind, there’s a fear that if my wife can’t get this job, then what’s the point of my own project? Better to just give up than face that crushing outcome.

And yet, there’s Caleb. Even with all the hurt, the disappointment and insecurity, he looked at the giants barring his path and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (Numbers 13:30)

I don’t know what will happen for my wife. I hope she gets it, but she really might not. I might finish this book, battle to get it published and, ultimately, no one reads it and no one cares. That would make us no different from millions of others around the world who face similar and regular disappointments all the time. We are not more special than anybody else.

Regardless of outcome, I would much rather be like Caleb, someone who chooses to live and believe as though God is real and seek to participate with God in the rescue of the world. Whether or not it works out the way I hope, I can choose to believe in the faithfulness and goodness of God, even when walking through a desert of insecurity and fear.

Today, for me, hope is a choice that I can make; to believe, even if things don’t go the way I hope, that God didn’t bring me to this point of my life to perish. I don’t know what the future holds and cannot pretend in some sort of prosperity gospel, but I will believe, at the very least, God didn’t bring me here to die.

I don’t know what anyone here may be going through. I hope that many are enjoying seasons of rest and success and prosperity. For those who are not, my heart goes out to you and I pray that you can experience the presence of God and hold fast for our ultimate hope in the person of Jesus.