It’s worth noticing that it wasn’t only the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim and Judah that failed to finish the job of driving out the inhabitants of Canaan. The whole nation was guilty. In Joshua 18, the whole congregation gathered together at Shiloh, and Joshua asks them all a very challenging question. In verse 3, he asks, “How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land, which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you.”

Les Waas is the president of “The Procrastinators Club of America.” “We’re a little embarrassed,” he announced recently in Philadelphia. “This is the first time we’ve observed National Procrastinators Week on time.”

The Procrastinators Club, formed in 1957, is devoted to putting off just about everything until tomorrow—or even later. “We feel that anything worth doing is worth putting off,” says Waas. None of the 80 or so members pay dues on time. “If they did, we’d throw them out.”

He went on to say “We feel that the ultimate thing to procrastinate against is war, Just think, if you keep putting off wars, eventually you might forget what you wanted to fight about.”

That sounds so good to the contemporary ear, but it is so unrealistic.  I like what Abraham Lincoln said about the civil war. “Now, judging after the manner of men, taking counsel of our sympathies and feelings, if it had been left to us to determine it, we would have had no war. And, going further back to the occasion of it, we would have had no slavery. And, tracing it still further back, we would have had no evil.”

The truth is, there is evil in the world and in my life. Joshua’s question to Israel is very appropriate for us as well. “How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land…”

Chuck
“So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.” Romans 7:4