You might wonder how it was that I could envision Joshua sitting on a wind-swept sand dune grappling with his fears?

A simple word in the Scripture, the English Standard Version of the Bible.

“Moses My servant is dead.  Now therefore arise…” Joshua 1:2 (emphasis mine).

It is easy enough to miss.  To gloss over and pass by its significance.  We can rush to what offers balm to our soul, words like, “Be strong and courageous”. You know the ones that can give us a temporary shot in the arm to boost our morale.  But have you ever stopped long enough to consider just how Joshua was able to find the strength and courage he needed to go somewhere that held so much unknown and uncertainty?

Or how that father found the strength and courage to walk past his fellow neighbors and local synagogue leaders and fall at Jesus’ feet begging for His divine intervention in his daughter’s life?  A man heralded as a ruler of his local town on bended knee pleading for help from Someone Who was virtually a stranger.

Have you stopped to ponder the profound implications behind the movement they both had to make in order to fulfill their destinies that are written in a book that has survived longer than most written documents?  So many classic stories contain messages of supernatural strength and compelling courage that no mere mortal could produce, but is that the case here?  I am not so sure that it is.  It seems to me that God doesn’t like pedestals in our world, for when we use them, we often begin worshiping something that was never meant to be worshiped.

Rather than moving quickly past Joshua and Jairus’ stories, let us dig in just a little bit more and look at the word, arise.

“To get up from a lying, sitting or kneeling position, rise; to awaken, wake up; to move upward, mount, ascend; to come into being, action or notice, originate, appear, spring up; to result or proceed, spring or issue.”  www.dictionary.com/arise

Whether Joshua was sitting or kneeling, his heart was in a position lower than God wanted it to be.  God’s first instruction to him, to help him where he was, was to implore him to move from the position he was in.  And that makes sense.

Many times in life, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual, we become stuck.  What is only a season feels like an eternity.  We may know that we are moving through a tunnel, but lose sight of that knowledge when we begin to wonder whether the light at the end will ever appear. Grief, in particular, is a long winding road where darkness descends and light battles fiercely to penetrate.  A day can be glorious and filled with abundant sunshine of radiating love, and the soul burdened by such loss can barely feel the warmth of those rays.

Joshua’s love and trust for Moses and God are mapped out before us in the books that exist before the book of Joshua.  No matter how strong he was, nor how courageous he had been, Joshua’s heart had likely sunk to new depths of pain that only the death of a loved one can bring.

It is interesting to me the paradox that often comes with faith. We want to be comfortable, able to see clearly the path before us as well as the end result before we become willing to move from where we are, but true faith doesn’t allow it.  So many times, some foreword movement, that emphasizes trust, is required before such clarity is gained.  And that is exactly how God began His words to Joshua.

He told him that He understood the crux of his paralysis:  Moses was dead.  And then, in what seems a bit surprising, He told Joshua to get up.  Staying there, motionless, in that pain would not move him towards the place God had prepared for him.  Remaining in that desert would not bring Moses back, nor would Moses have wanted him to continue in the same sandy wasteland that they had been sojourning through for so long.

If we go one step further and look at their journey in the desert, we will find that even in the midst of their sin and disobedience, God continually called on them to move. To arise from those moments and places of transgression and venture forward, even when they were really going nowhere because of their persistent state of sin.  Maybe that was Joshua’s training ground for understanding that it was crucial for him to move when God asked him to move.

And the father, what can we draw from his story?  We know he had a home.  We know he had wealth, helpers and the concern of many.  Because we are told that he was a ruler, we can presume that he lived in a manner of comfort that afforded pleasures which could have soothed his aching soul. We are not told that he lived at the harbor. Instead, we are told that he ventured there and met Jesus as He got off the boat.

By implication, can we see that his efforts began when he arose from his situation and moved towards another potential?  Do you see that if he sat there and stayed where he was, his daughter wouldn’t have lived?  Can you visualize him leaving his comfortable chair, putting on his shoes and hurrying out the door in the desperate belief that any hope of life for her was tied to him taking one step after another in the only direction he could find?  Can you see the pain that he had to endure in leaving the side of his loved one in what was potentially the last moments of her life?  The risk of missing out on his last remaining chance of being together with her. Steps that grew heavier the further he went.

Further, when the news of her death spread through the crowd and reached him, can you comprehend how difficult it must have been not to crumple to the ground and give up his last remaining hope?  Instead, he was strengthened and given courage through five faith-testing words:

“Do not fear.  Only believe.”  Mark 5:36

If believing is the antidote to fear, then arising from our situations is the needle that delivers the antidote.  It is the movement that breaks the tension and delivers the strength and courage to continue on.

It starts when we come to understand that the wisdom we need to find the right direction out of where we are stuck will come when we put God above our fears.

“‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.'”  Job 28:28

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7

“For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the ways of His saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil…” Proverb 2:6-12

“Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” Proverbs 3:7-8

Understand that when we choose to cling to our fears over God Who is continually nudging us to move out and away from them, we are fearing them more than Him. When we believe that we are stuck, that no light will shine again upon us, we are selling Him short. We embrace the evil message that He is not able nor willing when we choose to believe fear’s power over us rather than His. When we demand that our paths be well lit and life make full sense to us before we will trust Him enough to take that needed step, we are headed down the wrong path already and away from that which has the most potential to heal us. True faith doesn’t make such demands.

Instead, faith puts God in the right position above all else and trusts that when He asks us to “arise”, we should do so no matter how hopeless or uncertain our situation look…

“Taking her by the hand, He said to her, ‘Talitha cumi, which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.'”  Mark 5:36 (emphasis mine).