The Real Grasshoppers

How easy it is to look at the giants before us, and in our fear of the challenge ahead, see only our weakness. Our trembling knees send a clear message to the brain: You know you can’t do this, and so does everyone else; quit before you get hurt.

About six months after I totally lost my eyesight in the West African jungle, we elected to keep our already scheduled survey-camping trip to the northern wilderness area of Guinea. We’d packed our food supplies in three-day food packets; had enough clean water in tall, blue-plastic five-gallon containers; and everything else we thought we might need for three weeks loaded in the Isuzu Trooper.

The capital city had been planned as our first stop. I figured we’d enjoy a good night’s rest before hitting the incredibly rough roads to the northern interior. Boy, had I been wrong!

“The bandits tied up the wife and kids, locking them in one of the bedrooms. The husband had been faced with two men pointing assault rifles at him; what could he do?” said the lady at the missionary guesthouse where we’d been sharing the dinner table.

The account had been triggered by our news that we planned to spend one night in that city before turning towards the interior desert wilderness. We’d sleep one night at the home of another missionary family—in a little room in their courtyard, not the main house.

An intense fear gripped my heart and shook it nearly to death. All night long, I pictured myself ten years earlier, back in a Land Cruiser on an Ethiopian dirt road. The driver of our vehicle had switched on the interior light as we tried to pass through a village. “We want them to see you, so they’ll know we aren’t rebels,” the driver had said.

He’d stopped the vehicle, opening all windows simultaneously, as the heavily armed men suddenly appeared. I smiled, shaking the end of my stethoscope at the man, whose machine gun rested inches from my face. Only the driver spoke, reassuring the angry men we had just dropped off two patients at the regional hospital.

It’d been a tense eight-hour return trip, but we’d made it unharmed and without the white lady getting abducted. But, I could see the rifle tips back then; t’was different this time. Blind, I might accidentally move in the wrong direction. Bang!

At one point in the middle of the night, my tossing and turning woke my colleague, who expressed annoyance as much as compassion. “I can’t help it,” I said. “I’m just a grasshopper, and the bandits’ll think I’m a grasshopper, too.”

I should have spent the rest of the night next to an oil lamp, reading the entire bible story; I would have been comforted.

I’m picking up the Bible story in Numbers 13:27-33. Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land God had promised to give the Israelites. They’ve finished their forty days of exploring the area, and they’re giving a report to Moses.

“We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit.” (Enter Exhibit A, one cluster of grapes so huge and heavy that it’s dangling from a pole, carried on the shoulders of two men.) “But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large….” Each name and location of the ethnic groups in their specific areas is reported to Moses, giving evidence that the men really had covered the territory.

No doubt the group had began to murmur, because Caleb, one of the two remaining spies, broke in and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

The ten spies didn’t agree: “We can’t attack those people. They are stronger than we are.” In fact, they spread a bad report about the land among the people. “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size…. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them”

I must admit, every time I read this I wondered if they ever asked any of the people who lived in the land anything. No interview records have made it to the pages of the Book of Numbers. What is written is that those grasshoppers reversed direction and wandered around in the desert for forty years—one year for every day of the exploration

Fast-forward to the book of Joshua. Moses has died and left Joshua in charge, the spy who had believed as Caleb had; it’s up to him to bring the people into the Promised Land. The forty years of wandering are over; the generation who believed the word of the ten spies has been buried in the desert.

Before Joshua leads the people into the specific parcels of land appointed for each of the tribes of Israel, he calls for two spies to check it out. Remember now, these are the very same groups of people the first team of spies saw forty years earlier. Even the spot on the map between the two cities mentioned is only forty-two miles.

The spies entered Jericho, where a prostitute hid the men from the city police. Courageously she exposed the fear of her people.

Joshua 2:9 says, “I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt. And what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in Heaven above, and on the earth below.”

Bottom line here: The giants are the grasshoppers! Did you catch that timetable in the lady’s account? For forty years the story of the Red Sea’s parting had filled the region, even without social media. Everyone has feared the Israelites because God was with them. Those giants the ten spies reported to be stronger than the Israelites may have looked bigger, but because of God, the giants saw themselves as the grasshoppers. If only the people had believed and obeyed God.

God even pushed back the waters of the Jordan River at flood-stage so that this generation of Israelites could cross into the Promised Land on a dry riverbed. Yes, the news of this miracle crossing did reach the kings whose people had chased the rebellious little band of Israelites out of the area forty years earlier. It’s reported in Joshua 5:1.

“Now when all of the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all of the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until they had crossed over, their hearts melted, and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites.”

The take-away message is this: We who believe in God, and purpose in our hearts to obey Him, are not the grasshoppers. Whatever giants stand between you and triumphing over the challenge God has set before you, don’t be afraid; God is with you.

I hadn’t put all that together on that sleepless night two decades earlier, but I made a choice. The little, blind grasshopper would be in that vehicle headed north that morning; I refused to let my fear cripple me into disobeying God.

What happened next demonstrates God’s compassion and understanding. I believe that Father God’s heart arranged the perfect timing of our last conversation at the guesthouse. Just before slipping into the Trooper, we had a very special fifteen-minute visit; the family had been housed on the lower level of the same building where we’d spent the night. The couple who had been the victims of the robbery noted above told us the details of their story. As can happen through many re-tellings of another’s exciting adventure, our version had been grossly exaggerated. Yes, the couple and family had tickets on the plane back to the States—to have baby number four, not because of fear. They’d be returning with the new baby as soon as Mama and baby could travel again. If they didn’t have any fear over that incident, why should I? I felt God’s peace return when we drove onto the road headed north.

Have you ever felt like a grasshopper facing a gigantic challenge? I’d like to hear about it—one grasshopper to another!