APRIL 10 "WHY SHOULD I FIGHT FOR THEM"

   I don't know how they did it, they, being the tribe of Gad, Reuben and the half tribe of Manasseh, but they did. They left their wives and children behind to go fight for the rest of the Israelites that still had not possessed their land. Imagine knowing and or thinking..."this is crazy, I have my inheritance, my land and here I am, out here fighting, I could get killed doing this and never get to go back to my family, who am I fighting for and why?! Let them fight for this land, they are the ones that want it, I already settled for my land on the other side of the Jordan!" I know what you are going to say, "they had already promised they would when Moses agreed to let them have that land". And to that I say, "big deal!" People promise all sorts of things when they are excited, but when reality sets in they retract every promise they made under the guise of, "it was irrational, c'mon, I was to excited to be thinking straight, I mean what would be the point of me settling for this land on the east side of the Jordan if I am going to go die fighting Jericho, let's be real?" I did read that "any that did not go would be killed" and that is a strong motivation, no doubt, but I don't sense, from what I read that this is the driving motivation in them going. The feel I get from the text is that they are totally on board with this idea that they go fight with and for their brothers until all have their inheritance. The Israelites have been through some rough times and have not really shined in character, to say the least, but it is good to see them here with a good attitude and a valiant spirit. It just goes to show, that even the worse of us, still have some good in us. While in other areas they failed, they are showing exemplary character here, fighting and risking all, when they already have received what they wanted. Most would have tried to get the three tribes together and try to force this promise, to go fight, to be revoked. The more you work with people the more you see, everyone has weak character in some areas and strong character in other areas. Sometimes an individual will totally disappoint us in one area, while another person shines and then, the next weak the roles are completely reversed in another situation, where that person fails you and the other rises to the occasion. Any group of people, that is going to try to advance together "as a group" is going to have to remember these moments, where someone or some people, shined, because it will only be a week or two later where they may not shine so bright and that's when we need to remember we all have our moments of heroism and our moments of cowardice, we all have our moments of brilliance and our moments of stupidity and we all have our moments of great character and our moments where we are void of character. To advance as a group we must always acknowledge and accept these truths to be what they are and to remember that we ourselves are also included in that mix, lest any of us become self righteous.