HEARTLIGHT(R) Magazine: Special Feature: A Tale of Two Grasshoppers

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A leaden band tightened about my chest. Fearing the words I would hear, I traced in my father’s eyes the same dread that shackled me. Still, we cold not stay away.
In the light of dusk, we saw the men of Israel drifting in by clans and families, coming to the place of counsel. We took our place among them. Moses stood on the rock with Aaron on his left, Joshua and Caleb on his right. He leaned upon his staff like a man who had taken a mortal wound. From time to time he wavered, grasping Joshua’s shoulder to steady himself.
Presently he looked out over the assembly, drawing a deep, quivering breath.
“People of Israel!” he began. “This is what the Almighty the Lord of Hosts, says: ‘How long will this people rebuke me? After all the wonders and signs I have performed among them, how long will they refuse to believe?
“‘Because they have seen My hand, have heard My voice, and have eaten at My table, and still have not believed, this unbelieving generation will not be spared. Every man and woman who has reached twenty years of age will perish in the desert, and never see the land I promised on oath to their fathers. They will not enter the land of promise, because they doubted My strength and My love. Of all the sons of Israel who are of a score years or more, only Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh will I allow to enter the land, for these two believed in Me.
“‘As for the rest of the people, they shall wander in the wilderness forty years, until the faithless generation has utterly perished…’”
The words went on, but I heard no more. Forty years more to wander—more than three of my lifetimes! To be so close, yet denied—my soul searched without success for order in the chaos of my heart.
That night we ate a supper of bitterness, dipped our bread in a bowl of acrid silence. I looked at my father&#!51;his eyes stared away, across the bleak landscape of Sinai, seeking his grave among the wastes.
He shrank before my gaze. I could see his life already ebbing, as he stood under the Almighty’s wrath. The foreknowledge of his fate—empty years of wandering, a hopeless wait—haunted his face, and leached his will to live.
My love for him battled with resentment for the trial his generation had brought upon me. I was a casualty of the war between innocence and reality. Trying to understand my own pain, I was helpless to comprehend his.
The darkness in my father crept out of his eyes, filling the tent, overwhelming the light from the fire. My mother bustled about in voiceless desperation, occupying herself with mundane household chores as a bar to the fear pressing its cold weight upon us. Even my baby sister ceased her usually tireless babble, crouching in a corner of the tent, watching us all with eyes older than her years.
The cries came around that evening, announcing our imminent departure. Soon we would begin our long retreat from the threshold of our inheritance.
I questioned my father openly. I asked him how it was that he, a chosen leader of Israel, could so disbelieve in the might of our God as to tacitly consent to the rebellion for which we were being punished. I flung my questions at him with the heedless haughtiness of idealistic youth. I cared not whether he ever answered me; indeed, I hardly expected any response. With my angry interrogation the chasm between us grew wider, his dark silence deeper.
Then, suddenly, he rounded upon me in rage. He clouted me in the ear so hard that I fell to the ground, stunned. “You know a great deal, don’t you?” he shouted, his face a purpling mask. I cowered beneath his fury.
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