Time Condensed

Joshua 11:18 Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. 

Have you ever wondered, “How long is this going to take?” I know kids in the back seat call out, “Are we there yet?” We seem to get stuck in the feeling that time is going too slowly.
And then there are other times when we “need more time” to get things done. In those moments we think time is moving too fast, that there isn’t enough of it.
Sometimes as we read Scripture we think things happen in a day or two, when they actually take place over many years. Biblical narrative style is different than ours. We want times and dates. They don’t need these things to tell the story they are conveying. So it can drive us nuts sometimes as we read. We have the desire to know details that just are not there.
One of those sections of Scripture is in the book of Joshua. We read about the conquering of the cities in the Promised land, one after another. We might think that this took place in a matter of days or weeks when in fact it took almost five years to happen. And this wasn’t the entire land promised. This was the first phase of the clearing. They had many more places to subdue.
And there were places where they didn’t or couldn’t drive the inhabitants out of their place. They often stayed but were forced to do the manual labor on behalf of the Israelites.
So next time you feel like time is either flying by or crawling at a snail’s pace, remember that our timetable is not God’s timetable. Seek to cherish the moments you have, whether they are few or many, because they are few! This life is only a moment. Eternity awaits.