the book of joshua - story

This is Day 5 of a series of posts for the month of October. I’m joining Kate Motaung over at Five Minute Friday for the annual Write 31 Days challenge.  I will write about themes found in the book of Joshua each day, with a different word prompt.

Today’s word prompt is STORY.

There are a lot of stories in the book of Joshua that are fascinating to study and consider. But there is one more famous than all the rest.

I remember being in Sunday School as a kid, pretending to play a trumpet and marching around the room seven times. I remember the teacher telling me how cool it was that the walls of Jericho came down. I remember singing that child’s song , “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho // Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came a-tumbling down” I’m pretty sure our teacher had us collapse while singing the “a-tumbling down” part, too.

As a college student, I remember falling in love with Veggie Tales as I watched a bunch of french peas shoot purple slushies at God’s people while they marched around the wall. Pretty sure that’s not how it went down.)

As an adult, I’ve realized just how significant it is to read the Bible as one story. If you single out one of the stories in Scripture, like the Battle at Jericho, you can get a lot of wrong ideas of who God is. I’m pretty sure all I took away from that story as a child is that God likes to do cool things like make stone walls six feet thick comes down just by the marching and yelling. That is sooooooo not the point of the story.

The I find the point of the story in 6:27, “So the Lord was with Joshua…”

I can’t take what I learned as a child about Jericho into adulthood and have it matter much. Having a God that does cool things, even powerful things, is good to know. But it means so much more to also know that the Lord was with them. 

Why? As a covenant theologian, I believe God’s people include me. So this story tells me that He is with me, too.

This is my story. It’s the story of God’s people. He is with us always, never leaving or forsaking them.