Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The new year stares us right in our faces like a gunslinger in a classic Western. Its gaze narrows. Its trigger finger twitches, waiting for a signal.
The last several years have come after us like low-down, mangy desperados. After what we’ve seen, it’s normal to wonder what fresh misery has been brewed up for us in days to come. You may think you’re prepared, but you’ve thought that before, and still wound up having to ask, “Where in the world did all that come from?”
This is a completely understandable way to think. We’re gun shy. We’ve been through some things and have the scars to show for it.
It’s understandable, natural, and even to be expected. But (and I say this as your friend, not your accuser) it’s faithless.
You claim some faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, crucified and raised from the dead: you are not allowed to go timidly into coming days. I’ll grant that you have your reasons. I’d even concede that they make perfect sense. Still, your undefined fear of what the year will bring is a red flag signaling, to yourself at least, that you do not believe as you should.
Your homework assignment (because, of course, I’m in a position to assign work to you) is Numbers 13 and 14. It’s a 10-minute read. Moses sends spies into the Promised Land. All 12 come back in agreement that it’s an amazing land, abundantly fruitful, populated with fortified cities and even some of the Nephilim, the giants.
The division among the spies is over the question of who will eat whom. Ten spies are convinced the land will devour the people of Israel. Joshua and Caleb, however, see it working out the other way. In a delightful example of biblical “trash talk,” their argument is that even if there are giants, that’s just more meat on the bone to go around. “They are bread for us,” they say in 14:9.
Christian, this all happens in the fourth book of the Bible. Sixty-two more come after it, and each of them gives you more, not less, reason to tread confidently into the world laid out ahead of you. Give old Caleb a tenth of the good promises you have in Christ, and he’d win the planet, not just a strip of real estate in the Middle East.
In this world you will have tribulation, but Christ has overcome the world. He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world. The one with all authority is with you until the end of the age. You’ve been seated with him in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. Nothing 2024 can throw at you can separate you from the love of your king: not death, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword. You are in his hand, and no one is great enough to snatch you out. Your enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus Christ has come that you may have life, more abundantly.
Who is the food in this equation and who will do the feasting?
The year is bread for us.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at:
