The Courage to Build a Longer Table

When Joshua heard God say, "Be strong and courageous," he stood at the edge of a land already occupied, already storied, already loved by others. Progressive theologians like Brian McLaren invite us to sit with that discomfort rather than rush past it. Courage in the Joshua tradition is not the swagger of conquest. It is the trembling resolve to step forward when the path demands more of you than you thought you had.

Consider the pastor in a small Southern town who, after years of private conviction, finally opened her church doors to a housing-first ministry for unhoused neighbors. The deacons objected. Families left. The local paper ran letters calling her naive. But she had read Joshua 1:9 not as a battle cry but as a lament turned inside out — God whispering, "I know you are afraid. I am with you precisely there, in the feared place."

Rachel Held Evans once wrote that the Bible is not a weapon but an invitation. Joshua's courage was not about certainty. It was about fidelity to a God who kept showing up in the wilderness, in exile, in the margins — everywhere the respectable people had stopped looking.

The pastoral question is not whether you feel brave. It is whether you will set one more place at the table when every voice around you says there is no room. That is where the Holy One meets you — not in your confidence, but in your willingness.