What Following Gave You

“...there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.” - Joshua 13:1 (NIV)

Perhaps you have finished something you gave years to, and found the day that followed quieter than you expected. Not empty of what matters. Just quieter, as if you are not quite sure what comes next. And in that quiet, you notice the road continues. That isn’t the feeling of a completed chapter. It is something closer to standing where the years behind you are clear and the way forward is not.

Joshua, one of the oldest figures in Scripture, had spent a lifetime following God through wilderness and battle and promise. Most of us would have called the story complete. Yet God said, “...there are still very large areas of land to be taken over” (Joshua 13:1), and nothing Joshua had done was being set aside. After all those years, God still spoke as though there was more of Himself to give. Not because Joshua had done too little, but because God was still present. God’s work in Joshua wasn’t finished.

What surprises us is what those years have formed in us. We often imagine we will need less of God. And yet the psalmist, who had followed long enough to know, says this: “...I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel” (Psalm 73:23-24). After years of following, he was still held by His hand and guided by His counsel. That closeness was still the language he reached for. Perhaps the surprise is not that there is more of God to know. It is that following leaves us wanting more of Him, not less.

Perhaps that explains something we still find ourselves doing. We still turn toward God when we do not know what comes next. We still listen, still ask, still wait, the way years of following have taught us to, as if each year has made us not more independent but more aware of how much we receive from Him. Jeremiah once woke to a morning of not knowing what would come, and wrote, “...his compassions never fail. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). New again. Morning arrived, and God’s mercy was already there.

We may not know what lies ahead. Yet every morning we find ourselves coming back to the same Person. “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help” (Psalm 46:1). Ever-present. Not only at the beginning of our faith. Not only in the years we remember most. Present in this morning too, in whatever this day holds. We are still with Him. Still held. Still guided. We don’t come to Him today to find Him. We come having already been found. There is yet more.

Prayer

Father, thank You for every year, every step, and every place You have met us. Open our eyes to recognize You again today, and remind us that You are not finished. There is yet more. Amen.