Living in the Fairy Tale

I was reading in Joshua this morning about the Israelites taking/destroying Jericho (Joshua 6). It was interesting to me that Joshua gave instructions to the two spies (who had taken refuge with Rahab the harlot) the task of finding and delivering Rahab and her relatives safely out of the city. I imagine the pandemonium and destruction. The passage says the Israelites killed every man, woman, and child in Jericho…EXCEPT…Rahab and her family. What an astounding task, the task of deliverance, of rescue, bestowed upon the two faithful spies. Their first trip into the city, they were the targets, they were the hunted at risk, they were the messengers of destruction, who were given refuge by God in the home of Rahab. On this return trip, they enter with the hunters, but they are spared the task of destruction, and given the mission of rescue and deliverance. What a beautiful and precious picture of mercy and salvation against the backdrop of bloodshed and violence! But without the background, would the focal point be as resplendent and striking?

The circle of the remnant desolating completely, yet rescuing a remnant, is complete. What a beautiful, full of mercy, God-thing!!! God has always done this. Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Abraham and the Chaledeans, Isaac on the altar, Joseph in Egypt, Elijah against the prophets of Baal, Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, and the list goes on.

The whole world is Jericho. God has pronounced His judgment and all are condemned…EXCEPT for those who respond to Jesus’ knock and open the door. To those, Jesus has made and completed, a plan of deliverance. These will be rescued and become a part of His holy nation, His royal family.

I long for Rahab’s faith! The spies gave their word, but the waiting must have seemed interminable!! I wonder if she was able to walk through the market and gaze into the faces of her friends and aquaintences and see them as walking dead men and women? Did her heart break for them? Did she solicite everyone she could to come be a part of her family of delivered ones? Or had she lost hope, presuming that her present was reality, and her future was merely a fairy tale?


Oh God, give me eyes to see my neighbors as about-to-be dead men, and give me a heart that desperately wants to see You deliver them!!! Use me to do it, if You so desire.