Joshua 19:10-16: a reflection

10The third lot came up for the children of Zebulun according to their families. The border of their inheritance was to Sarid. 11Their border went up westward, even to Maralah, and reached to Dabbesheth. It reached to the brook that is before Jokneam. 12It turned from Sarid eastward toward the sunrise to the border of Chisloth Tabor. It went out to Daberath, and went up to Japhia. 13From there it passed along eastward to Gath Hepher, to Ethkazin; and it went out at Rimmon which stretches to Neah. 14The border turned around it on the north to Hannathon; and it ended at the valley of Iphtah El; 15Kattath, Nahalal, Shimron, Idalah, and Bethlehem: twelve cities with their villages. 16This is the inheritance of the children of Zebulun according to their families, these cities with their villages.

This passage records the boundaries of the tribe of Zebulun, a dry list of border towns and landmarks, Sarid, Dabbesheth, Chisloth-tabor, and the rest. It reads as mere geography, the careful surveying of one tribe's inheritance. But there is something hidden in this ordinary list that only later history reveals: this territory of Zebulun, in the region of Galilee, is the very land where, centuries later, Jesus would grow up and begin his ministry. The land Isaiah called Galilee of the Gentiles, where the people in darkness would see a great light.

Notice what God was quietly doing in these dry allotments. As the tribes received their borders, God was laying out, in ordinary geography, the very land where the Messiah would one day walk. Zebulun's unremarkable list of border towns was, unknown to those who received it, the map of the region where the light of the world would dawn. God's redemptive purposes were being woven into the mundane assignment of territory, long before anyone could see it.

There is quiet wonder in that about how God works. His purposes are often hidden in the ordinary and mundane, in things that look at the time like mere administration or geography, but that he is using toward ends no one can yet see. The dry list of Zebulun's borders was, in God's hand, the setting of the gospel. And the ordinary details of our own lives, the unremarkable circumstances and places, may likewise be, in God's purpose, more than they appear. Trust that God is at work in the mundane, weaving his purposes through the ordinary, as he laid out the land of the Messiah in a list of border towns.

Lord, in a dry list of border towns, you were laying out the very land of Zebulun where the Messiah would one day walk and where the light would dawn; your redemptive purposes were hidden in ordinary geography. Help me trust that you are at work in the mundane details of my own life, weaving your purposes through the unremarkable circumstances and places that look at the time like mere administration. Nothing ordinary is beneath your use. As you set the stage of the gospel in a list of towns, work your purposes through the ordinary things of my life.