by Miceala Shocklee

Walking through Skid Row today, I stopped to talk with Pastor Octavio, one of the street preachers. He has a thick accent (can't tell whether it's Mexican, Spanish (yes the two sound different), or something else), but he still makes his words clear.

Expecting to chat casually for a few minutes and then pray for him, I got a surprise. A good surprise. I was reminded again of what a fount of wisdom Octavio is. He's so unassuming, lights up whenever we go over to talk to him - but there's a power behind what he has to say.

Today, he told me about the story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho. Joshua and his troops were trying to take the city - except it was surrounded by a giant imposing wall. So Joshua turns to Yahweh, the God of his fathers, the God who parted a sea and rained food from heaven and sent water from a rock. And what does this God tell Joshua to do? Go walk around the outside of the walls once for six days. And then do it again seven times on the seventh day.

If I were Joshua, I probably would have been thinking, "what the heck, God? I want to capture this city, and you're telling me to go walk around its wall. That sounds like a dumb idea."

So, the bible doesn't comment on what was going through Joshua's head, but whatever it was, he walked around that wall. Six days in a row, he and his army walked around that wall, not even making any noise except for seven random priests blowing trumpets.

Knock down a wall by walking quietly around it. That's a dumb idea.

Bet the guards who most likely would have been standing on top of that wall didn't hesitant to remind them of that, either.

Then there's the seventh day. And Joshua walks around the wall seven times, letting the people shout now.

And what do you know. The wall fell down. "Collapsed," according to the NIV. Joshua and his army captured the entire city. People, animals, treasury stores. Everything.

Walking around that wall doesn't seem like such a dumb idea now.

What Octavio was telling me, it was like a shade was lifted somewhere in my consciousness. I could totally relate. How many times have I been faced with something seemingly as impossible and unconquerable as a giant wall in my life, and in response to God's prompting - expecting, or at least hoping for something more definitive, like an answer being rained down from the sky - have I thought, "well that's a dumb idea." God tells me to do one thing and I don't see how it could possibly do anything to knock down what I'm facing. How many times, instead of being obedient like Joshua, even in the face of a dumb idea, have I tried to do things my way instead, feeling that I've "figured it out," I've found the point of attack on the wall - and instead I just spend a while frustrating myself trying to ram my solution into the wall over and over again while the wall doesn't budge one inch?

That shade that flicked up - I realized (again) that hunh, God really does know best. It's worth it to listen to Him. To go along with what He's telling me to do, even when it seems like a really dumb idea. Because it turns out that when God has them, really dumb ideas turn out to be brilliant.