There are many references to the Promised Land in the scriptures. The Promised Land was an area that the Lord promised to Abraham (Genesis 12:1,7) and all of his descendants. The land area included in the promise was larger than modern Israel. It was composed of both modern Israel and an amount of the surrounding land (Joshua 1:3-4).

The scriptures tell us much about the Promised Land and the story of the chosen people of God, the Hebrews (more commonly known now as the children of Israel or Israelites). Much of the Old Testament covers the accounts of the Hebrews being selected by God as his people, led to the Promised Land and their adventures taking it and keeping it from their hostile neighbors.

What there is not, is any direct explanation of why the Lord selected the area that he did for the Promised Land. After all, the Lord could have selected anywhere for the Hebrews to live. Why did he select semi-arid desert scrub-land when there was highly fertile land in either Egypt or the valley of Mesopotamia? The scriptures do give us the answer, but we have to dig a little.

I've had the opportunity to share this small vignette from my life a couple of times recently, so I'll also share it here in-case anyone else might find it amusing.

Before I was in the church, back when I lived in England, I was a bit of a metal-head. I listened to rock and heavy metal music and outside of work lived in jeans and black t-shirts. I had lots of black t-shirts, mostly band tour shirts. Henry Ford would have been proud of my t-shirt selection technique: any colour as long as it was black. How many black t-shirts did I own? Well, enough that they comprised a full load in the washing machine.

At some point, and I don't even remember the reason, I had purchased a bright red t-shirt and was worried about it bleeding all over my work shirts. This was back when as a programmer, I had to wear a suit and tie to the office. And then it dawned on me, just throw it in with my black t-shirt load. I will never know if that red t-shirt bled any colour in the wash, but I do know that all of my black t-shirts looked just fine afterwards.

A pastor is a saint before they are a pastor. I say this because there is tendency to regard pastors (all licensed ministers really) as above the regular folks in the church and I believe that this is unhealthy for church culture. Respecting your pastor and following their spiritual leadership is healthy, but considering them above you just because of their title is bad.

For the record, when I use the term saint, I'm using the biblical meaning of an individual saved believer within the church, not some alleged super Christian as taught by a certain large church organization who shall not be named here. Do a word search in your favorite bible study software or bible website and you’ll see what I mean.

Perhaps the root of the issue is that we have done a poor job separating people and roles (or offices if you prefer that term). This seems to be a general problem with humans as it happens even in the most secular of large corporations. For example, people get a job position with the word manager in the title and suddenly they are a MANAGER and don’t you forget that! The good ones rise above this, but many do not, providing backstory to the modern parable that "people don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers". The good managers are those who are still whatever they were before their promotion, only they now use their skills to help and provide for their team. My background before pastoring was IT and the good managers were still good programmers at heart. When I arrived at the role of Technical Lead, I had enough responsibilities on the project that my available programming time was limited, but I was still the one that my team came to when they got stuck because I was the best programmer. I considered that my role was to enable them to do their work, whatever that meant that I needed to do. I would run interference and keep them out of meetings whenever possible, I would help them when they got stuck, answer their questions or deal with organizational blockages.

Back in the mists of time, when I started as a pastor, I had this dream that the role would be amazingly spiritual all the time. Don't get me wrong, there certainly were spiritual activities. Preparing sermons and teachings for the Sunday and Wednesday services and teaching bible studies at other times counts as spiritual. The rest of the activities, while generally needful and important, were undoubtedly less spiritual. On a good week, I would be about 20% spiritual activities, with the significant balance being the business of running a church and keeping the congregation out of jail. (Mostly kidding about the jail thing.)

Perhaps most people don't give this much thought, but a church is a business. Most are classified non-profit and tax-exempt, but even so, they are a business and must be run as such. Annual business meetings, board meetings, filings with appropriate state and federal departments, maintaining proper accounts and following non-profit organisation accounting practices. And don't forget the fundraising! We used bake sales, rummage sales and peanut brittle sales. Let me tell you, we made lots of peanut brittle! And it was good. We had people contacting us as soon as the weather started getting cold, asking when we were going to be selling our peanut brittle.

And then there’s the care and feeding of the congregation. This is the most challenging and variable part of the whole pastoring thing. You just never know what they’re going to ask or do. I've been asked advice on many topics, some of which I knew about and others I had to do some serious Internet searching to find answers for them. I have helped people put together budgets, obtain cars, organise weddings and funerals and so many other things. From early in my time as a pastor, I was often asked to assist with slaughtering animals. This was something that I had never done before, so with help from a good friend (Thanks Bill! You know which one you are. Goodness, I know so many Bill's and William's!) I learned, very much on the job, how to slaughter a variety of animals and then process them. Now, this is a useful life skill, but not one that I thought would accompany being a pastor.

The Lord sets the gold standard for power of all sorts.

Destructive power. It seems uncontentious to say that Hollywood, and the media industry in general, does not like Christianity or anything to do with God. Freewill and all that. Of course, they are welcome to dislike whatever they wish. That being said, they do seem to spend a good amount of their time referencing it in various ways. The ten plagues that God brought upon Egypt when he was freeing his chosen people, the Hebrews, are often referenced by the media. Whether by making movies about the event or using it as a reference to describe the enormity of some disaster, they treat it as the gold standard upon which any devastation is to be judged. Weather commentators use terms like "Biblical proportions" when describing things like hurricane damage and movie producers seem to enjoy making and remaking movies about the ten plagues so that they can incorporate the maximum amount of special effects.

Constructive power. While the world seems to like concentrating on the destructive power of God, he also sets the gold standard for creative power, specifically the creation of the universe and everything in it, including us. Gotta admit that speaking the universe into existence is impressive. I love the creation account and when you read it carefully, it always strikes me as the most briefly and humbly described use of power by the Lord. There was no intent to impress, just a willingness to provide a wonderful universe for the new life he was about to create.