Hi Folks:

The maple syrup experiment continues. I produced another whopping amount this week - a full 1/4 cup.

Jan is getting a lot of substitute teaching. Four days last week, four days this week. This is about as much as she really wants. By Friday she'll be pretty tired.

We had our church annual meeting tonight. We are encouraged. Attendance is up, people are excited, and we see God do neat things. God is cool.

We continue to look at Joshua. The reins of leadership have passed to Joshua and now he leads the people into the promised land by crossing the Jordan River.

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Joshua 3:7-8,13 And the LORD said to Joshua, "Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: `When you reach the edge of the Jordan's waters, go and stand in the river.' . . . And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the LORD--the Lord of all the earth--set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap."

At times God asks us to do something which sounds, to be frank, crazy. When Moses was leading the people of God out of Egypt, they landed on the shores of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army hot on their heels. God said, "You’re going across there on dry land." It seemed crazy at the time, but God made it happen (see Exodus 14).

Our passage today was Joshua’s "exodus" experience. The priests with the ark of the covenant were to approach the Jordan River while it was at its fullest, and when they stepped into the water it would stop flowing.

Sounds kind of crazy, doesn’t it. Here in Shelburne where I live, the Roseway River flows past our backyard. Its not a large river. I could throw a rock across in many places. In the summer it almost dries up. But in the spring when it is at its fullest, I wouldn’t want to try to cross it.

In addition, I think I would find it hard to believe that our little river would stop flowing, even with the small hydro dam a couple of hundred yards upstream. Water has a way of working its way downhill.

I give Joshua a lot of credit. There he was doing something big, and there are times I struggle with the simple things. A couple of weeks ago I was asked to sing at a fundraiser for our local Christian camp, Camp Jordan (ironic, isn’t it?). All week I felt that I wasn’t supposed to take my music, but I did anyway. As I unloaded my guitar I forgot the music in my car. Once inside, I had to chuckle. "Lord, you have a sense of humour, don’t you?" I was nervous, but I sang without music. This shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was a growing point for me because one of my fears is embarrassment.

When I started sensing that I shouldn’t take my music, I thought it was a little crazy. "I can’t do that." But as a speaker and musician, I know that the more eye contact I make, the better it is. I understood why God wanted me to do it that way, but I was still afraid.

The journey of faith is one where God asks us continually to step beyond ourselves. The ways in which he leads often sound crazy. We think, "I can’t do that."

What sounds crazy to me may be easy for you. What sounds crazy to you might be easy for me. But God calls each one of us to trust him more and more everyday so that one day when God asks us to part the water, we ask "Which way to the beach?"

Hope this helps. Be OnFire,

Troy

ON FIRE is a weekly letter of encouragement by Troy Dennis. This letter published Mar 27, 2006.