Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

In this month of June, we begin—after Trinity Sunday—the long period known in the Kalendar as “Ordinary Time.” We call this season “ordinary” not because it’s mundane but because it is ordered after Pentecost using the “ordinal numbers”—first, second, third, etc., all the way until the “Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost.” So these weeks are “ordinary” in that they’re numbered.

During this season, our liturgical color changes to green to represent growth. We shift our attention from the life of Christ (from Advent and Christmas, through Epiphany and Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide) to the life of the Christian. Our question now through the rest of the year is, How do I live in light of these things?

As we embark on Ordinary Time, I have been thinking a lot about a story we all heard as children in Sunday School: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.

With some issues in life, we can discern a way forward, a clear path for what we must do. But with other things, solutions may not come readily. The way forward does not always seem clear, and sometimes we feel like we’re spinning our wheels. Perhaps there is some area in your spiritual life where you feel this way.

But I was thinking about how God told Joshua to move forward, how to enter into battle with the city of Jericho. The Scriptures say that “Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites; no one went out and no one went in.” Perhaps you feel you’re at a stalemate like this in some area.

Well the Lord’s command to Joshua was not to attack this well-fortified city, but to march around it for seven days, to circle its perimeter, in total silence. “You shall not shout or let your voice be heard, nor shall you utter a word, until the day I tell you to shout.” On the seventh day, the Israelites were to shout and sound the trumpet; and on that day, as we all know, “the walls came a-tumbling down.”

Now I find it interesting that the Lord’s solution to the impenetrability of Jericho was literally for Joshua to just keep showing up and to just go around in circles.

I write this to encourage you in the areas where you feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Perhaps God is not calling you to action but to simply keep showing up and to go round in circles in silence. Sometimes he calls us into circumstances where waiting and non-action is the solution.

Perhaps there is some vice which seems to you as unconquerable as Jericho, and the Lord is calling you in your weakness to simply keep showing up to confession. Or perhaps there is some relational difficulty you are dealing with, and the Lord is calling you to “not shout or let your voice be heard.” Or perhaps it is a prayer request that has been on your heart for years, and the Lord is just calling you to keep marching around the city.

Whatever your situation, perhaps you can remember that “the battle is the Lord’s” (1 Samuel 17:47). Sometimes he calls us to march around in circles in silence so that we can realize that it is not by our strength but by his grace that our victories are won.

Perhaps on the seventh day, the trumpet will sound and the walls will fall down of their own accord; not by our striving but by the sudden salvation of God.