You may not be the leader who will take the people into the Promised Land.
You may be the one who leads them through the wilderness, wandering for forty years on a journey that should have taken just a few weeks.
You may have visions of the land flowing with milk and honey. You can’t wait to see this place with your own eyes. Each day, that vision compels you to get up every day, to walk another couple of miles, to put up with a smelly, whiny throng of disgruntled followers who aren’t sure they want to be on this journey in the first place.
You may be the leader who pleads with the people, exhorts them, judges them, scolds them, cajoles them, until step by step, day by day, you lead them…there, to the edge of the beautiful place.
You have put in your time: years of preparation followed by years of faithful leadership. Shouldn’t you be among those who take the first glorious steps into the future?
Yet God says “no.” Not you. You will not enter the Promised Land. Instead, you will go up on a mountain — alone, as you have so many times before — and die with the fulfillment of the vision, the end zone, the finish line — so tantalizingly in sight but so utterly out of reach. Someone else will finish the job to which you gave your life.
If that is God’s plan, will you be OK with it?
Pro Ecclesia 