Struggles that lead to strength
“Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
This verse of scripture is one of the verses that I remember learning as a child. I can’t remember if it was one of those “list of bible verses for every situation” or one that I memorized during Bible Drill. But it is one of those verses that will always be part of my memory, and one that I turn to when I need encouragement or need to offer encouragement to others.
We fine this verse right at the beginning of Joshua. Moses has died, and God has called Joshua out to be the next leader for the people of God. God tells Joshua to lead the people into the land God has given them. The first nine verses of this book consist of God telling Joshua all the things God will do for Joshua and the people of God. God promises to never fail or forsake God’s people; God tells Joshua to follow the law that God gave Moses, and that will allow Joshua to be prosperous and successful.
I have recently been rewatching the TV show “Lost.” It has been a very long time since I’ve watched this show, and so it feels like I am watching it for the first time. In a recent episode I watched, there is a scene where two characters are discussing a moth in a cocoon. One of the characters, John. points out that the moth is about to break out of the cocoon. He could help the moth by using his knife to just make the opening a little bit bigger and to free the moth.
But if John did that, then the moth would be too weak to survive out in the world. It is the struggle the moth goes through to get out of the cocoon that makes it strong enough to survive out in the world; out of the place where it is safe and has been transformed.
I can’t help but think that this time of the pandemic has us feeling a little like that moth in the cocoon. We are in a place that we are struggling to get out of. We want so badly to be able to hug our friends, and take off our masks, and to go back to the way things used to be.
One of the last things we hear in this scene from “Lost” is John says “The struggle is nature’s way of strengthening.” Maybe this is a lesson that we can learn from today. Instead of focusing on all the things we are missing, what if we reframe it and look at all the things we are learning and all the ways we are becoming stronger; stronger as a community, as parents, as leaders, as children, as people.
Joshua and the people of God didn’t know what was on the other side of the Jordan River. Sure, they were told that good things waited for them there, but they’d had a rough 40 years wandering in the wilderness and an even harder time before that while they were slaves in Egypt. I can imagine that it was hard for them to trust that good things were coming to them after the decades of trauma and sadness they’d experienced.
But the consistent thing we read in the story of the people of God is that God was always with them and that they trusted this. So as the people of God are beginning a new chapter in the land God has promised them, God reminds them (again and again and again) that they should be strong and courageous; they shouldn’t be frightened or scared; because God is with them wherever they go- into the wilderness, into the Promised Land, into a pandemic.
May we carry this reminder, promise, and truth with us today and each day. May we take the struggles we are facing and allow them to strengthen us for the journey ahead. And may we always remember that God is with us.
Kristen Koger, Pastor for Children and Families, First Baptist Church of Decatur