"The Day the Sun Stood Still"

Pastor Laura Guy

June 28, 2009

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We thought about the setting for today's story in Joshua. The Israelites have been homeless for hundreds of years. God has promised them a land of their own so they can become a great nation who will bless the rest of the world and teach them about this God who creates and liberates and loves. But there's one problem - there are already people living on the land.
We wrestled with our modern perspective - that it doesn't seem fair for Israel to take land that belongs to others. But the story was told from the perspective of these people who had been enslaved and beaten down and pushed around - the oppressed ones. It is now time for them to take their place in human history. They are the underdog, and we are meant to understand that their mission to take the land is a sacred one for them.
We read how Joshua and the army defeated the local kings in Joshua 10:1-15. During the battle, it says that God threw hailstones at the enemy, and that, when Joshua asked God to make the sun and moon stand still so they could have light to fight, God obliged. There are lots of theories on the Internet about how that might have happened or how we can prove it.
We realized that what was most important, however, is to realize that this tells us that our God is willing to get His hands dirty on our behalf. He does not sit on a mountaintop, waiting for the outcome, He is there in the trenches, hurling hailstones and even holding the sun in the sky. It is the story of the whole Bible - God is for us. God is with us.
We prayed that God would be with us in the battles we face, and that we would remember to say "thank you" when the sun finally sets.
We shared communion at the table of Dependence. On this week when we celebrate our nation's independence, we also celebrate the blessing of being dependent - totally dependent - on God.