Caleb

 December 10, 2022

The older I get, the more I identify with Caleb. I’m not quite yet Methuselah material, but I like Caleb. In his younger years, against the advice of the other ten spies, he and Joshua alone believed they could conquer the Promised Land. Because of the unbelief of the ten and the rebellion of the people, he had to wait forty years to see the fulfillment of his faith, but throughout those forty years, he didn’t waver.

We pick up the story five years into the conquest. Caleb is 85, and according to his own testimony, he is as strong as he was forty-five years ago, and is eager to claim his inheritance. I can’t say I’m as strong as I was forty five years ago, and I have a few years to go before I hit 85, but I like Caleb’s spirit. He tells Joshua, “Give me this mountain!” Notice, he didn’t believe success was guaranteed. In Joshua 14:12, he adds, “It may be that the LORD will be with me and I shall be able to drive [the inhabitants] out as the LORD said.” He believed God’s promise, but was aware of his own limitations. 

The promise wasn’t a gift dropped in his lap. The inhabitants of the place on which he had set his sights were giants, mighty soldiers that had to be forcefully removed. So Caleb removed them.

People my age often lose their vision. I’m not talking about their physical eyesight, but their ability to dream and see possibilities in the future that beckon them on to new adventures. We have a tendency to look back to the golden years of our youth, wishing somehow to be able to recapture simpler times. I think we often are looking for what we’ve lost, which isn’t so much our youth as it is our dreams. We think of what might have been, unlike Caleb, who didn’t let a 40 year disappointment dampen his enthusiasm. Instead of looking to the future, we’re looking over our shoulders, which makes it difficult to move forward.

Caleb wasn’t one to follow the crowd, He wanted to be out front in the thick of things, on the cutting edge of life. He gathered around him like-minded men and in the sunset years of his life accomplished his life-long ambition. Seven years ago, one of our Cuban pastors said to me, “You are Caleb. Go conquer your mountain!” There may be giants in the way, but to quote Caleb, “It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the LORD said.”