“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.” Joshua 1:7

When God brought the children of Israel into the land that had been promised them, God repeatedly told them to be courageous. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, their central calling as followers of God was to have hope, no matter how bad things looked.

God knew that crossing those borders and entering into the land would not be easy for them. They needed to regularly be reminded of God’s faithfulness to follow God into the land that God was calling them. Walter Brueggemann points out three tasks that were necessary to the calling to hope:

1. They were called to reject any images that take their eyes off of God and God’s purposes.
2. They were called to keep the sabbath to live in relationship with God.
3. They were called to honor the image of God in those with little power.

From this standpoint, following God looks no different for us today. We are called to hope. And hoping means rejecting those things that distract us from God, keeping the sabbath, and honoring the image of God in those with little power. Pray that God would empower you to build those practices into your weekly living, that you might hold on to hope in God and God’s purposes.

Questions to Ponder: What are the threats to our hope? What are some of the images that distract us from seeing God? How does keeping the sabbath cultivate hope in us? What does it mean to honor the image of God in those with little power? 

This week’s devotions are adapted from the book, The Land: Place a Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith  by Walter Brueggemann. Fortress Press, Minneapolis. 2002.