Give Me This Mountain

Context

Forty-five years before this, Caleb was one of twelve scouts sent into the promised land. Ten came back terrified, talking about giants and walled cities. Caleb came back convinced they could take it. The crowd believed the scared ten, and that whole generation wandered the desert until they died off.

Caleb spent every one of those years still believing the thing he saw was worth having.

Story

Now the wandering's done and the land is being divided plot by plot. Everybody his age is being handed the easy valleys, the settled quiet acreage with nothing left to prove. Then the old man walks up to Joshua and points. Not at a valley. At the mountain. Hebron, the exact hill country where the giants live.

"Give me this mountain. The Lord promised it to me. The giants are still up there. The cities are still walled. But maybe the Lord will be with me, and I'll drive them out, just like he said."

He is eighty-five. He says maybe, and he reaches for the giants anyway. Nobody offers him a rocking chair. He goes up the mountain, and he takes it.

What We Learn

We treat the last chapter of anything like it's supposed to get smaller. Wind down, coast out, take the easy valley you already earned. Caleb looked at forty-five years of held breath and decided the promise hadn't expired just because his hair went gray.

What's the mountain you quit asking for because you decided you were too late?