Going round in Circles

Joshua 6:2-3 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days.

I hate travelling. My favourite place on any holiday is the arrivals terminal at Birmingham International. I know it’s crazy isn’t it? Believe it or not but I spend my time around the pool with the sun shining, dreaming about those moments I walk through passport control back home. See when those wheels hit the runway. I know I’ve reached my destination.

In life, most of us have a destination in mind, certain milestones ahead of us that we are advancing towards. Whether they be spiritual or physical, we all see a destination ahead of us.

For Joshua and the Israelites the destination for as long as they could remember had been the promised land. Yet their path to the promised land had them spinning in circles in the desert. Now they are finally in the promised land, their path leads them to Jericho. This is a moment of advancement. This is a moment of victory. God tells Joshua to look at the city and see the fortified walls and armed guard as all ready on the canvas. 

But this call to advance suddenly takes an unexpected turn, quite literally. God instructs them to walk in circles around Jericho. The destination is ahead of them and yet the Israelites find themselves walking in circles. Again.

6 days of waking in circles around walls that must have seemed increasingly impenetrable. See the problem with circles is you keep coming back to where you started, and suddenly a journey towards a destination suddenly feels like we’ve stopped making progress. Sometimes life feels like we are going round and round in circles and we feel deflated and defeated. ‘I thought i’d moved on from this place. I thought I’d dealt with this.’

But the amazing truth of the story of Joshua and the Israelites is that whether walking in circles because of disobedience or complete obedience, sometimes the path ahead of us means coming back to places we’ve been before. See even if today you feel like you are going in circles, God says you walk in victory towards victory. As we walk with God even if the path ahead leads us back to places we’ve been, there is always a way forward.

Check out our Sunday Service where I'll be diving into this in to this story.