Do you know a "Caleb"? Is there someone in your life who is annoyingly hopeful? I hesitate to ask that, as your answer might have my name on it. I'm not a "Pollyanna", nor do I wear rose-coloured glasses, but I was raised in a home where we focused on the positive. Which are you? Are you a half-empty or half-filled person? How do you view life? Do you respond and rebound like a "Tigger", filled with excitement and enthusiasm, always expecting God to show up in some miraculous way, or are you more an "Eeyore" with doom and gloom behind every disappointment?
Just recently while speaking with a friend, very aware and cautious of my own unshakable hope, I asked her if my reply to continue trusting God through a difficult journey she had shared with me was hurtful to her. I love her so dearly and I really wasn't trying to be flippant towards the unexpected pain she was experiencing. All she had shared seemed beyond comprehensible, but I also believed that grief and hope could walk together at the same time. I wasn't denying the circumstance she was presently living. My initial reaction was one of deep sorrow and tears, but I knew, that should God choose, He could turn the situation around at any moment. I just feared my spoken hope might have been an added burden to her wounded heart.
Her gracious reply assured me that my hope was contagious and that my words of encouragement and ongoing prayers were strengthening her own walk of hope. She actually said it was one of the reasons she reached out to me. She needed someone to breathe a fresh reminder into her soul of all that God could still yet do. Her story wasn't over.
In Numbers 14:24 God Himself describes Caleb has having "a different attitude than the others". When the majority of the other spies entering the land of Canaan saw impossibilities, Caleb, along with Joshua, saw God.
It's not easy standing on the minority side of faith with skeptics surrounding. It's not that Caleb and Joshua had tunnel vision. They saw the power and size of the people in the land and the large, fortified towns, but they never forgot God who had already declared multiple times that regardless of the opposition ahead, He was giving them the land. Giving them the land! This exploration excursion wasn't to discover whether a conquest was possible, but to give aid in planning out the mission. Instead, all the negatives the spies saw before them incited within them a God-forgetfulness.
Repeatedly throughout Scripture we are reminded to walk by faith and not by sight. Despite my bent to be hopeful, I hate that I can so often be a sight-walking-follower, hesitant and fearful to move forward when everything is pointing towards risk and the way is unclear. When circumstances appear disappointing or threatening, it takes a tenacious trust to walk in the truth that God is good, loving, faithful to His word, and to remain confident He will honour those who keep believing.
Maybe your "Canaan" doesn't look much like a "land of promise" today. Hopeless. Impossible. Finished. I'm praying, like Caleb and Joshua, you will remember that God is with you and you will stand, in faith, on the word He has already given.
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