Joshua’s Theology (2)

“to love the LORD your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  Joshua 22:5

Walk – How do you walk the pathway of life?  If you’re like most of us, you soon discover that the majority of your walking hours are determined by emotions rather than reason.  Oh, we all have our rational world-views (some are a good deal more rational than others), but when it comes down to walking the pathway, we move by feelings.  We are not Vulcans (remember Mr. Spock?).  As human beings, emotions are our greatest asset and our most terrible curse.

We don’t think about our spiritual lives as pathways of emotions.  We usually get stuck at the rational rest stop, exercising our minds with theological arguments and doctrinal debates.  But that’s not how we live, is it?  Life comes with fear, joy, grief, sorrow, enchantment, gladness, hope, discouragement, gloom and dozens of other emotional injections.  If your walk can’t handle these ups and downs, then you are in for some really treacherous times.  What we need more than anything is a theology of emotions.

The Hebrew culture considered the word for walk (yalak) as a metaphor for an approach and attitude toward life.  Their view was simple but profound.  Start walking.  After awhile, when you stop being frustrated by the fact that you can’t drive, you will notice life.  You will see things that were never in view at 60 miles an hour.  You will discover that life slowed down is life with time to digest what is happening – to the world and to you in the world.  You will arrive at a pace that allows you to feel the world you occupy.  All of that hurry to get somewhere just truncated your ability to be somewhere.  The theology of emotions probably begins with walking.

Will life really fall apart if you can’t do everything on the list today?  Will your future be eternally jeopardized if you don’t go faster?  What would happen to your inner sense of well-being if you took a stroll instead of a sprint?  Is living synonymous with pushing?

Ancient people of the desert knew about walking.  It took months of walking to go from Syria to Egypt.  It took years of walking to cross the Jordan.  But what they gained in the walking journey is something we lost when we invented the accelerator.

Don’t tell me how your life is today.  Tell me how you’re walking.  I’ll know the rest.