Spiritual Ponderings

Full-power, passionate intimacy. That's the most frightening thing, especially for religious folks. Yet it is starting to dawn on me that the very thing religious people are most afraid of, most intimidated by is the very place that God intends to take all who are being prepared to live safely with Him throughout all of eternity. Given that context, defining what sin really is takes on a whole different complexion. Analogy: Our hearts and our emotional systems are like hoses created of an elaborate fabric or web of materials designed to contain fluid moving through them at high pressure. The problem is that sin has created a condition of multiple weaknesses in most of the areas along the lining of these hoses. Thus, if high pressure were actually allowed to be applied to the hydraulic fluid passing through our hearts it would spurt out all over the place from the wrong places. The hydraulic fluid in this system is the passion of God – passionate love in its purest...

For whatever reason I got to thinking about Caleb this morning. Maybe it has something to do with things I am processing myself right now. Anyway, I decided to look up every reference to Caleb in the Bible and see in very condensed form what I might learn about the whole story of this interesting character. What I found was even more than what I was already suspecting. This man is truly an inspiration and a model of humility and courage all in one. By what I can gather, Caleb and Joshua could have been friends early on. Maybe they had hung out together around the time of the exodus from Egypt or maybe they had even gone through some experiences previous to that time together, there is no way of knowing for sure. But it does appear from some clues that Joshua may potentially have been as much as twenty years younger than Caleb, or maybe not so much. But this dynamic reveals an interesting potential aspect of their relationship. Somehow I feel that Caleb could have been a mentor ...