Margaret B Doll

A Three Days' Journey Margaret B Doll

Throughout history God has used his servants to exhort his people to remember the things he has done. For if we forget the past, the danger is not that we repeat it, but that we forget the one who is working out his plan of redemption on our behalf and for the honor of his name. But the cares of the world crowd in and rob God of the honor due him. The world beckons us away from him...towards our own man made idols. Little by little the ideas and philosophies of the world have challenged God's word unrelentingly. In the spirit of analysis and scrutiny, the educated and intellectuals still echo the words so long ago spoken, 'Did God really say...?" Can the Scriptures be trusted? Aren't they just stories? Doesn't science take precedence? God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. All they needed was a three days' journey to get far enough away form the cultic practices and influence of that nation so that they could celebrate a festival to God and worship him. In this era, people are still in need of finding a place uninfluenced by the world, a spiritual place where they can worship in spirit and in truth. Three is a significant biblical number. Three is the minimum number needed to establish a pattern; it serves as a rhetorical signal indicating significance; biblical episodes that occur in sequences of three often generate a sense of expectation; once an event has occurred for the third time, something new and unexpected is likely to happen; three speaks of totality and sufficiency and connotes completeness. A Three Days' Journey is an invitation to rediscover our identity in Christ, the unity he calls us to for the honor of his name, and the sense of worship that comes from knowing him and loving him with all our hearts and minds. It is a book written in a narrative style but rich in theological truths embedded in everyday contexts. And hopefully it will establish a pattern of trust in God's word, significance in being made in his image, a joyous and hopeful expectation of his return, and a sense of completeness that comes only from truly knowing, loving, and leaning on him.