Week 5 August 2026 – REFLECTION ON GREAT HEIGHT SHORT ON WEIGHT

“The Nephilim were on the earth those days”…”for you created all things and by your will they were created….”  Genesis 6:4a; Revelation 4:11b

The long and short of it is that Genesis 6:1-4 is thought by analysts to be more muddling than all 22 chapters of Revelation.  The most bookish of the apostles who changed his name from Saul as in “Asked for” to Paul, meaning “little,” would have us heed his big advice to Timothy, “Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments…you know they produce quarrels.”  Those early and literally gigantic saboteurs of God’s Salvation plans are named again in Numbers 13:33.  Moses sent 12 men to spy out the Promised Land, involved with his leadership team in mapping out tribal allotments.  Although it did flow with “milk and honey” as anticipated, their large cities were fortified to the hilt.  Yet worse, “we saw the Nephilim there…We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” 

After 40 years of desert wanderings, the cowardly nay sayers had all perished.  Joshua and Caleb then “hopped” across the border to secure Israel’s possession of Canaan, and subduing it in stages.  With Joshua in charge, Caleb asked specifically to be given the mountain where the towering Anakim still threw their enormous weight around.  Now they were the grasshoppers sent packing swiftly thanks to an old man’s gigantic trust in Yahweh.  “Here I am this day, eighty-five years old.  And yet I am as strong this day as on the day Moses sent me, just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war…” (Joshua 14:10-11).  As a result, Joshua blessed Caleb and gave him Hebron as an inheritance. Ironically, that’s where Saul [“Asked for”] was crowned, after sovereign Israel had senselessly clamored for a king to ape the nations around them.  Whereas Caleb meant “faithful dog,” he quickly proved to be disobedient and disloyal, and so God disowned him.  Enter a sadly sidelined David on the world stage and before long he goes from tending sheep to trouncing the gloating Goliath.  It is precisely here where New Testament “gigantes” of triumphant faith run into a final twist that briefly derails the fast track to God’s glory.  In Greek mythology, they were a fearsome race of immense strength and aggression, born from Gaia [the earth] after she was fertilized by the blood of Uranus [the sky].  The ensuing Gigantomachy led to the legendary war where they battled the Olympian gods for control of the cosmos. 

Let’s forget eye-rolling in favor of rolling up our sleeves to meditate on Revelation 4:11, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being “  The weight of God’s glory makes for lighthearted and rejoicing risk takers, fully covered by Christ’s shed blood.  I really like the idea of going out with bang here, and thus love resorting to Jeremiah 15:19,  “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me. If you utter worthy, not worthless words, you will be my spokesman and spokeswoman.”