Some interesting things here. The Lord is using fear to subdue the people the Israelites will conquer.
I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.... [Josh. 2:9] ...for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. [Josh. 2:11]
Rahab, a prostitute [or an innkeeper...depending on how it's translated], sees the truth and acknowledges it. Her good confession will save herself and her family and all in her household [even those who'd come to see a prostitute?]
It's amazing how fear in my life keeps me from living. Fear of heights almost kept me from hiking with my family to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I didn't think I could do it. I'll never forget how God brought me into the Canyon and out. I can't believe the things that fear would have kept me from experiencing with my family.
As He did with Moses, God shows He is with Joshua by means of a miraculous crossing of a body of water on dry land. This time it's the Jordan River. And it works, the people transfer their reference from Moses to Joshua.
That day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they revered him all the days of his life just as they had revered Moses [Josh. 4:14]
Joshua will erect a roadside monument as a memorial to their miraculous crossing. Roadside markers are a powerful tradition. I am intrigued by the growing popular phenomenon of the roadside cross. Growing up I don't remember ever seeing them. Either they weren't something a child would pay attention to or they just weren't there. I think I would have remembered them if they'd been there. I think it's a rather recent phenomena in this country. I remember the first time I came across or noticed a roadside cross was in Mexico some years ago. It was during a trip Mariana and I took to Cancun. Instead of going to the touristy marketplace to shop, we got on a bus with the people who worked at the resort and went to the local market. Along the way, we crossed intersections whose edges were decorated with crosses. Some intersections were punctuated with more crosses than others. Some dotted with an endless sea of white wooden crosses. Then I learned that these crosses were not for decorative purposes. They were roadside memorials for loved ones who had died in car accidents at these intersections.
A sea of roadside crosses makes for a good caution sign.
How deep is our grief that we want to mark the place where someone we loved tragically died. Now I see these roadside crosses all the time, along the interstate in my hometown. Everywhere. And I wonder about the stories behind them? What is the story of the life and the family's grief in the passing?
But Joshua's roadside monument was different. It's a pile of stones...not a cross...but passing through water and onto the distant shore and into the Promised Land could be a symbol of the power of the cross. So Joshua's monument is celebration of passing into the Promised Land.
And so, I hope, are many of the crosses I see along the roadside.
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