Your wives, your children and your livestock may stay in the land that Moses gave you east of the Jordan, but all your fighting men, ready for battle, must cross over ahead of your fellow Israelites. You are to help them until the Lord gives them rest, as he has done for you, and until they too have taken possession of the land the Lord your God is giving them.
- from Joshua 1:14-15

“You are still part of this community,” stands at the core of Joshua’s message in today’s passage. As we saw yesterday, a group of Israelites had settled down east of the Jordan River. They had flocks and herds and homes and families. They were safe and content. But they had both a commitment and a connection.

The tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh had promised to send warriors when the time came for God’s people to move into the promised land. Without their strength, the mission might fail.

There’s a moving scene in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” where Merry Brandybuck argues with a giant tree, the ent Treebeard. The ent and the armies of the trees decided not to go to war to defend Middle Earth. That’s when Merry shouts: “But you’re part of this world, aren’t you? You must do something.” Merry shared the same conviction that stands behind Joshua’s speech to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the Manassites: common belonging creates common concern. If you belong to a community, you have a responsibility to that community.

One of our challenges is that many of us feel independent and isolated from our communities. It’s not that we don’t care about others, we just don’t feel connected to them. We don’t know or don’t see our neighbors. We don’t have kids in some of those schools. We don’t know anybody who’s lived in fear of the police or in fear for the safety of a family member in uniform. We’re not hard-hearted, we’re just disconnected.

When Jesus saves us and welcomes us into the family of God he begins to connect us with people who are different from us. We’re connected with people who differ from us ethnically and economically, in personality and in politics, in where they live and in what they experience every day. If we embrace this new connection we’ll receive power from God’s Spirit to take action with deeper and richer compassion in all of our relationships.

How has the Lord connected you with people who are different from you? How does that connection shape the way you love, serve, and give?