"Caleb said "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." Numbers 13:30, NIV

Struggling to come to terms with a diagnosis of cancer, I could identify with the story of the spies sent out by Moses. For 40 days they surveyed Kadesh. They could tell Moses and the Israelites about the land, its people, and the towns they lived in. The land flowed with milk and honey, but they said the people were “giants” and they themselves were but “grasshoppers.” A threatening future loomed before me. I felt inadequate, defenseless and fragile in the face of surgery, radiotherapy, the chemotherapy. Could I do this? How tempting it was to see myself as a grasshopper

Struggling to come to terms with a diagnosis of cancer, I could identify with the story of the spies sent out by Moses. For 40 days they surveyed Kadesh. They could tell Moses and the Israelites about the land, its people, and the towns they lived in. The land flowed with milk and honey, but they said the people were “giants” and they themselves were but “grasshoppers.” A threatening future loomed before me. I felt inadequate, defenseless and fragile in the face of surgery, radiotherapy, the chemotherapy. Could I do this? How tempting it was to see myself as a grasshopper!

Because Israel listened to the 10 spies, who had their eyes on the giants instead of listening to Joshua and Caleb, they wandered 40 years in the wilderness. The only adults of that original group to go into Canaan were Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who said, “We can certainly do it!"

Often we feel inadequate to face what lies before us. But we serve a mighty God, and with God’s help, “We can certainly do it.”