January 17

Numbers 13:30–33

30 And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.

31 But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.

32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.

33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Biblical Insight

After Caleb suggests taking possession of the land, the spies who brought back an evil report changed their report. While they had first reported a land that “floweth with milk and honey” and provided ample sustenance for the inhabitants, they then reported that the land “eateth up the inhabitants thereof.” This new description of the land as an unhealthy and dangerous place to live may have been a reference to the frequent warfare between Canaanite and city states, or it may simply have been an exaggeration.

Daily Devotion

Not far from the shores of the Pacific Ocean lies the Nazca Desert in Peru. For centuries the desert has been a source of fascination because the desert’s 170 miles of hard, red soil is broken by a series of trenches. From the ground level, the trenches appear to be lines, and for centuries people believed the trenches were remnants of ancient roads or ancient irrigation.

These hypotheses changed in 1939 when Dr. Paul Kosok flew over the desert in an airplane and discovered that the lines formed symbols and pictures. The random lines only gain meaning when seen from the sky.

Oftentimes we can regard situations in our life as having no purpose simply because we cannot see its purpose. We can find ourselves in the presence of our promised land and deem it too dangerous because we only see things from the ground level. It is important to remember that God’s perspective is different. God sees the entire picture where we only see trenches.

Therefore our faith cannot be dictated by what we see. Take a moment to brainstorm how to trust God during seasons when we can’t see the end result.