The Wall

In our lives we experience a lot of heartache.

A lot of pain and suffering.

A lot of bad decisions.

And every time we experience one of those things we put a brick down. Eventually, those bricks start adding up and eventually those bricks become a wall. And as time goes on that wall gets bigger and bigger until we can't see the other side anymore.

We become trapped.

We can no longer see the beauty and goodness on the other side. That feeling of the sun beating down on your skin, that sensation that tingles down your spine when you feel a breeze. Those are all gone. It becomes a life dictated by the boundary that that wall creates.

Our initial instinct is to get passed that wall. It's to get to the other side. And we will do whatever it takes to get there. We will walk for days, months, years even, to find an opening in the wall. To find a way in.

Or

We will try to climb that wall and no matter how many times we fall we continue the climb.

But never do we really consider breaking that wall down.

I mean, c'mon, the wall is freaking HUGE. We could NEVER tear down that wall.

We want to get passed that wall but we don't really want to deal with it. The wall isn't really your problem, it's the whole getting to the goodness thing that's your main goal. The wall is just an obstacle.

This reminds me of the Wall of Jericho. For those of you who don't know the story and for those of you that do but need a little reminder, here's what happened.

There's this guy named Joshua. Joshua is a faithful servant of the LORD and will do whatever the LORD asks of him. One day God tells Joshua that the city of Jericho, in which Joshua and his people are currently camping near, is "in [his] hands" (Joshua 6:2). Now, that's a pretty huge gift. Joshua was probably more than thrilled to be receiving such a grand reward. But there was a catch. God wasn't just going to hand this city over to Joshua, as much as Joshua might have wanted it to be that way. Rather, Joshua had to follow some instructions. The only way he would receive this gift was if he gathered his men, seven priests, and the ark of the covenant and walked around the outer wall of this city for six days.

What the heck?!?!

That's a really random request as well as a lot of walking. But the LORD assured Joshua that if he did this, on the seventh day the wall would come crumbling down and Joshua would be able to claim his land (after a little bit of a war, of course). So as crazy as it sounded, Joshua trusted his LORD and did exactly as He said.

Joshua could have just as easily done his own thing. He could have gone in through the entrance of the city with his men and killed all its inhabitants. He could have used his men as a human ladder and climbed over it. He could have done so many things. But he chose to do the one thing that not many others would have done in that situation. He trusted God.

Why?

Because he had faith that his LORD would do exactly as he had promised.

And what happened on the seventh day, you might be asking? Exactly what God said would happen. The wall came crumbling down and Joshua claimed the city of Jericho.

We want so bad just to get to the other side of our walls. We are willing to climb over and risk hurting ourselves. We're willing to walk for days and days even though eventually we'll always wind up at that wall again. We will do whatever it takes to get to that goodness and beauty without having to deal with our walls.

But the only way to that goodness.

The only true way to that beauty.

Is by tearing down that wall.

Is by trusting God enough to tear down that wall.

We all have a lot of bricks.

We've all experienced a lot of heartache.

A lot of pain and suffering.

A lot of bad decisions.

We all have a wall preventing us from experiencing the joy that God wants us to experience.

And the only way that we can experience that. The only way that we can once again feel the sun beating down on our skin and once again feel the sensation that tingles down our spine when we feel a breeze, is by tearing down that wall. It's by confronting our heartache and our pain and suffering and our bad decisions and allowing God to tear them down.

Yes, the bricks and debris will always remain. But they'll be scattered and destroyed. They will only remain there as a memory. So that on that day that we stumble upon them again, we can look at them and say:

Man! That was a HUGE wall.