Deuteronomy 1:22-28: a reflection

22You came near to me, everyone of you, and said, “Let’s send men before us, that they may search the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we must go up, and the cities to which we shall come.” 23The thing pleased me well. I took twelve of your men, one man for every tribe. 24They turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the valley of Eshcol, and spied it out. 25They took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us, and brought us word again, and said, “It is a good land which the LORD our God gives to us.” 26Yet you wouldn’t go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God. 27You murmured in your tents, and said, “Because the LORD hated us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. 28Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our heart melt, saying, ‘The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to the sky. Moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there!’”

Moses recounts a pivotal failure. The spies had gone into the land and brought back its good fruit, agreeing it was a good land the LORD was giving them. But the people would not go up. Instead they grumbled in their tents, and their fear twisted everything. They said the LORD had brought them out because he hated them, to hand them over to be destroyed. And they magnified the obstacles: the people are bigger and taller than we, the cities fortified up to heaven, and there are giants there. Fear made the obstacles enormous and made God an enemy.

Notice the double distortion fear worked. First, it inflated the obstacles: the cities grew to fortifications reaching the sky, the enemies to giants, until the task looked impossible. Second, and worse, it distorted God: the very God who had rescued them from Egypt was recast as one who hated them and meant their destruction. Their fear made the difficulties bigger than they were and made God's love into hostility, exactly backwards.

That is what fear does to us too. It magnifies the obstacles until they seem insurmountable, and it whispers that God is against us, that our hardships are proof he does not care. Both are distortions. The obstacles are rarely as invincible as fear paints them, and God is not your enemy; he is the one who brought you out, who gives you the good land. When fear inflates your obstacles and recasts God as against you, name it as the distortion it is. Trust the promise over the fearful report, and remember that the God who rescued you loves you still.

Lord, fear made your people see giants and sky-high walls, and worse, made them believe you hated them, when you had rescued them in love. When fear magnifies my obstacles and whispers that you are against me, help me name both as distortions. Let me trust your promise over the fearful report, and remember that you, who brought me this far, love me still. Guard me from the unbelief that fear breeds.