The Long Day. Joshua 6-16

Random fact about me: When watching movies, the main thing that affects my "suspension of disbelief" is whether or not the moon phases are plausible. I can accept all sorts of other things like teleportation, magic powers or talking animals, but if there's a full moon in the west at sunset, the movie just loses its credibility for me. For instance, the other night I was watching a movie with a murder occurring during a solar eclipse, then just a few days later another murder happened by the light of a full moon. I could cope with the murder weapons (a meteorite rock and a metal disc hurled frisbee-style with pinpoint accuracy), but I just couldn't accept the astronomical mistakes.

So in the book of Joshua, I have to wonder and check if it is actually plausible whether the sun and moon could stand still at Gibeon and the Valley of Aijalon (Joshua 10:12-13). Under standard scientific assumptions, it is impossible; the mechanism for the sun to appear to stand still for a day just isn't there. But the standard scientific assumptions are necessarily non-theistic; the scientific approach (speaking as a scientist) relies on rules and order and predictable outcomes, which falls apart if you allow a God who can do whatever they want. However, if we allow as a hypothesis that there exists a God, then it is plausible that they, who created and set in motion the sun, moon and earth, could also pause the motion. It would, however, be a miracle. The Bible in fact admits that this was unique; "There has been no day like it before or since".Of course, if we were to deny this event on the basis of "scientific impossibility", we would also have to deny much of the rest of the Bible which describes other miracles.

So I take as my working hypothesis that God did perform this miracle. This was at the outrageous request of Joshua, who asked the Lord to make it happen.  Of course, this was not an arbitrary, selfish or purposeless request; Joshua had received God's promise "I have given them (the Amorites) into your hands", so the outcome that Joshua was seeking was already in God's purpose. But still, this faith just blows me away. Joshua had the guts to ask God for something huge and impossible. I want to have that kind of faith, that trusts God to do the impossible (even if it includes messing up phases of the moon).