4th Sunday In Lent - Forty Years - A Journey Ends

First reading	Joshua 5:9-12 ©

The Israelites celebrate their first Passover in the Promised Land

The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have taken the shame of Egypt away from you.’

  The Israelites pitched their camp at Gilgal and kept the Passover there on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening in the plain of Jericho. On the morrow of the Passover, they tasted the produce of that country, unleavened bread and roasted ears of corn, that same day. From that time, from their first eating of the produce of that country, the manna stopped falling. And having manna no longer, the Israelites fed from that year onwards on what the land of Canaan yielded.

Today I read about the Israelites arriving at the Promised Land, the Plains of Jericho. The forty-year long journey from slavery in  Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. Forty years of toil and sweat and flies and heat and sand and more sand with no place that they could call their own.  Forty years of being faithful to God and also testing Him and complaining to Him.  Forty years where they were fed with mana in the morning and quail in the evening, all of this has come to an end.  Forty years they have carried the law with them on the stone tablets and at times they carried them also in their hearts. Forty years where once the rock was struck and water flowed so the people would stop grumbling against God. Forty years of walking and becoming one people and learning to trust the God that led them out of Egypt. Of the people that left Egypt as slaves, not one of them crossed over into the Promised Land because of their disobedience to God.  Even Moses only was able to look at the Land of Promise but he never set foot on it but rather dying within sight of it. 

I hate the thought of being in this desert for forty days and I would go stark raving mad if I had to be on it for forty years.  It was an amazing journey that the Israelites took.  The distance, in a straight line, between Ramses and Canan is estimated to be about two hundred and fifty miles, more or less, but that was in a straight line and the Israelites traveled in anything but a straight line.  Had they traveled in a straight line from Ramses to Canan they could have completed the journey in as little as eleven days!  Had they done that, we would not have the Ten Commandments, the Arc of the Covenant would not have been built and more than that, the bonds that formed over the years in the desert that made them a particular people would not have formed and the world would be quite different today.

We are all on a journey through the desert.  For me, it is both an actual desert filled with all the delights that the Israelites experienced but not the mana and quail that they had.  Our life on this earth mirrors the desert wanderings of the Israelites.  We go through life and we experience afflictions, disappointments, love, relationships, pain, ecstasy, turmoil, and serenity just as our band of intrepid Israelites did.  We too can expect a reward for our faith because God has promised us.  At the end of our lives, we will enter the Promised Land of the Saints and we will be with those we love even if we did not know them when they were alive.  The Israelites entered a land filled with milk and honey and on that first day, they ate food that was found on their land and drank water from the springs found there.  They laid their burden down and began to take possession of the land that they had been promised.  For us, it will be the same except we will not have to fight to enter God's heaven.  No, He will be there and He will say to us, "Come enter the kingdom prepared for you by the Father from the foundation of the world."  We will enter, we will rejoice, we will love.