It was an eventful time for Israel. They had crossed the Jordan and entered the promised land. The men had been circumcised. They celebrated the Passover and the manna had stopped falling. Now it was time to begin taking the land.
Joshua was near Jericho when he saw a man with his sword drawn. He asked him if he was with him or the enemy. To his surprise, the man told him neither one and went on to say, “As commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Credit to Joshua for falling facedown to the ground in reverence and asking what message God had for him. The angel told him to take off his sandals, for the place where he was standing was holy ground.
Joshua did just that.
With this incident, the curtain is oh-so-briefly pulled back between the visible and the invisible, the natural and the supernatural, and we get a glimpse behind it. What do we see? We don’t see the commander of the Lord’s army fumbling around looking for his sword, trying to find his battle plans or uncomposed in any way. He was there ahead of Joshua.
God is once again reminding His people, “I’m in control here, not you. The land you are to receive is a gift from me—not the result of your strategy, tactics, military supremacy, or anything else. You are standing on holy ground.”
This makes me wonder how many times we’ve waited on God when the reality was, He was already there waiting on us. The ground we were on was holy, but like Joshua, we weren’t able to see it. Maybe we need to learn to live with our shoes off, our hearts open and our eyes on the unseen.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16)