Saturday, March 9, 2013

Josh. 5:9-12; Ps. 32; 2 Cor. 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

 

Joshua 5:9  “The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away the disgrace of Egypt from you’.”

 

            After wandering in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years, the Israelites, with forty thousand armed for war (forty again…), crossed the Jordan into Canaan. Just as the exodus from Egypt was marked by the parting of the waters, here the waters of the Jordan River stop north of the crossing, allowing the Israelites to enter Canaan with dry feet.  The generation that enters the land God promised to Israel, however, is not the one that left Egypt.  God had declared that the older generation would not enter the land flowing with milk and honey, because they had not listened to the voice of God, and over the forty years of wandering, that first generation gradually passed away.  God makes a way in the desert; God makes a path through the waters; God leads into a land of milk and honey,  those who listen to God’s voice.

 

O loving God, may we always listen to your voice, that we may enter the life  you have promised us.  Amen

·         Read  Joshua 3-5, a story we rarely hear in worhip. Attend Vespers at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church.