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What you are reading is what our editorial team calls the “bridge weekend.” Our goal with the first weekend study each month is to tie together what we are reading about in the daily studies with the theme that is being addressed in the rest of the magazine. Sometimes the connection is easy to make; sometimes it takes some creativity. However, almost any theme would be difficult to tie in with the passages we are studying early this month. Like some of the more obscure case laws in Deuteronomy or the extended genealogies in other parts of Scripture, the apportioning of the Promised Land is one of those hurdles people have a hard time scaling when trying to read through the Bible in a year. It’s not the most exciting thing we read in Scripture—if we succeed in reading it.
On the other hand, revival, genuine revival, is an exciting thing. We delight to hear or to read about God’s miraculous work of regeneration, especially when it comes down to us in flood proportions. We have a great time considering the great things God has done. However, as the father of a growing brood of blessings (God has given my dear wife Denise and me five small children so far), I am also excited over God’s miraculous work of regeneration as it happens from generation to generation in the more ordinary proportions of covenantal faithfulness. I’m excited about it in my own life and in the lives of the families in our rather fecund local church.
We are too often like that perverse generation that is always seeking after a sign. Wanting to see the spectacular display of God’s power in a miracle, we refuse to see the spectacular display of His power in the ordinary. The God who made the sun stand still so Joshua could decimate God’s enemies is the same God who causes the sun to rise every day. And the God who brought life to New England not once but twice in times of Great Awakening gives life daily to the children of those to whom He has given life.
God has made me, like Abraham, a rich man. My flocks are not numerous, but my heirs are. But what I long for my heirs to inherit is the pearl of great price. I am not so concerned that they receive an allotted piece of land in a temporal nation (though we should not denigrate any of God’s good gifts), but that they receive a mansion prepared for them by their Elder Brother. Praise God the God we serve has promised to be not only our God, but the God of our children, and our children’s children, and as many as are afar off. It is indeed a great miracle that He would take the children He has entrusted to me and bring them back to Himself. May the Spirit so work in the hearts of all of our children.