Scoutmaster's Minute & Coach's Corner
as part of a Mountain Top Experience

Joshua and Caleb - "I should like to refer to the great story of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt to the promised land. In that story there is an account of one special man that moves and motivates and inspires me. His name is Caleb.

Shortly after Moses led Israel out of bondage from Egypt, he sent twelve men to search out the promised land and to bring back word about living conditions there. Caleb and Joshua were among the group. After spending 40 days on their mission, the 12 men returned. They brought back figs and pomegranates and a cluster of grapes so large it took two men to carry it between them on a pole.

The majority of the search party gave a very discouraging report of the promised land and its inhabitants. Although they found a land that was beautiful and desirable and flowing with milk and honey, they also found that the cities were walled and formidable and that the people, the 'sons of Arak', looked like giants. The Israelite scouts said that they felt like grasshoppers in comparison. Caleb, however, saw things a little differently, with what the Lord called 'another spirit', and his account of the journey and their challenges was quite different. He said, "Let us go up at once, and possess their land, for we are well able to overcome it." (Numbers 13:30).

Joshua and Caleb were men of great faith, and they joined in urging that the Israelites go immediately to the promised land, saying, "If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us, a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for...the Lord is with us; fear them not". (Numbers 14:8-9)

But the faint-hearted Israelites, remembering the security of their Egyptian slavery and lacking faith in God, rejected Caleb and Joshua and sought even to stone them to death. Because of their lack of faith, the children of Israel were required to spend the next forty years wandering about and eating the dust of the desert, when they might have feasted on milk and honey. The Lord decreed that before Israel could enter the land of Canaan, all of the faithless generation who had been freed from bondage must pass away - all go into eternity - all except Joshua and Caleb. For their faith, they were promised that they and their children would live to inhabit the promised land.

Forty-five years after the twelve men returned from their exploration of the land of promise, when the new generation of Israel, under the leadership of Joshua. was completing its conquest of Canaan, Caleb spoke to Joshua, "Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me...to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. Nevertheless, my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the Lord my God. And now behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the the day that Moses sent me [at least in the spirit of the gospel and its call and needs]: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now,...both to go out, and to come in." (Joshua 14:7-11).

From Caleb's example we learn very important lessons. Just as Caleb had to struggle and remain true and faithful to gain his inheritance, so we must remember that which the Lord has promised us, a place in his kingdom, and we must ever strive constantly and faithfully so as to be worthy to receive the reward.

Caleb concluded his moving declaration with a request and a challenge with which my heart finds full sympathy. The Anakims, the giants, were still inhabiting the promised land, and they had to be overcome. Said Caleb, now at 85 years, "Give me this mountain", or in other words, give me these challenges.

This is my feeling for the work at this moment. There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, "Give me this mountain," give me these challenges."