About a week ago, I felt as if I might drown in the pity party that I had been throwing myself. I was knee deep in party favors, if you could consider them that. Piles of laundry, medicine syringes, beeping medical equipment, dogs with ear infections, snow storms……the list goes on and on. I was tired……beyond tired. I felt as if I had been wandering in this wilderness forever and I was running dangerously low on hope.

Again with the theme of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness (if you could only hear the inflection here!) Why, oh why, Lord does this feel like OUR story right now? How long will this be our story? Last week I had quite frankly had enough of the wilderness. I needed the promise land, I needed to at least get a GLIMPSE of the promise land. The Israelites got to send spies over to check out the land, they knew the promise land existed. I was starting to doubt that ours did, that this would be our story forever. Hope had been hidden from my eyes (probably under all of those party favors, I can SERIOUSLY throw a good pity party!) I cried with some sweet sisters Saturday morning and confessed that I needed to find my hope again, that is the only thing that makes this life work.
Sunday, Dan was visiting a church on the east coast while he was traveling for work. Within minutes of the worship starting, he sent me a text asking me to live stream the service and watch with him. I joined the live stream as they were starting my favorite song. When the pastor began preaching about the Israelites in the desert I had to laugh, OF COURSE that would be what the sermon was about. However, this sermon was on a part of the journey I had not been focused on as I was throwing my streamers and blowing the obnoxious party horns. This sermon was about the Israelites crossing the Jordan to conquer the land.
Joshua 3 tells us that the Jordan was at flood stage when the Israelites were to cross. The pastor did a fantastic job imagining what they may have heard. The rushing waters eroding at the banks, seeing things being carried away by the flood waters. As I was listening I was screaming inside…..THIS IS WHERE I AM!!! I hear the rushing waters as more and more is being eroded from our lives by this ugly illness. My rushing waters sound like beeping medical equipment and frantic phone calls from my son as he finds his sister on the floor. I am on the banks of the Jordan so to speak.
Joshua 3:15 “Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam.” vs 17 “The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.”
I imagine that the Israelites stood looking at the flooded Jordan River and might have worried, like I did last week, that they might just drown. How overwhelming must their situation have felt to them as they faced those rushing waters? I think I can imagine.
Once the priests carrying the ark, the very presence of God, stepped into the river the waters stopped flowing. The waters were stopped 16 miles upstream so it may have taken a bit for the waters to completely stop flowing over their feet and create dry land. I closed my eyes and imagined stepping into the waters (we don’t need the ark, God’s presence lives in each of us) and I put down my party favors. I let the water wash over my feet so to speak and I found my hope again. God may be stopping the waters miles away and it may just take a while to see my dry land. By the end of that sermon I knew that these rushing waters were in fact NOT going to drown me. The pastor said, “Let’s not worry about how long it takes the river to dry out.” We just need to have faith, I just need to have faith (and hope).
I had been so focused on the wandering part of the Israelites story that I had lost sight of the conquering part, the actual crossing over into the promise land. What a divine gift this sermon turned out to be for me. You see God had to join me, where I was (wandering in the desert), to take my hand and lead me back to my hope.

My waters may still be rushing for now, but when the time is right, God will stop the waters upstream and my family will cross over on dry ground into the promise land. That is really a reason worth celebrating.