day no. 14,538: the sin of acquiescence

Numbers 14
The people put their faith in the report of the 10 rather than the hope of the 2. The command was to take the land, but the people fixed their eyes only on the giant hurdles and fortified cities before them. They put their faith in their fears and chose to disobey God's command and disinherit themselves from His will. When God responds by affirming their disinheritance and confirming that they will die according to their own prophecies -- penniless in the desert -- they mourn. They acquiesce to the original command to take the land, but Moses warns, "Don't go! You are going against God's commands and indomitable giants." But wait, if the giants were too much for them, why did God tell them to go up against them in the first place? Because, they were not going up against fortresses and monsters on their own, they were going with God and nothing is impossible with Him. But these things are impossible with man, so when the people finally decide to attack the land, they are doing so without God, the one thing that made all the difference. And so, many of them die in their attempt to retroactively obey God. When He said, "Go!" they were all brakes. When He said, "Stop!" they were all accelerator. They were guided by their desires and fears and not by faith in God, which is why they were disinherited from father Abraham's family tree.