This summer I was privileged to go to the Holy Land. I did not climb Mount Nebo, but I did see the land that Moses saw from Mount Nebo’s summit.

Moses’ view of the Promised Land

If I had been Moses, I would have been disappointed. From that vantage point, the Promised Land did not look very appealing. Immediately ahead of Moses was the Dead Sea. Its name says it all. Looking up from the Dead Sea, Moses would have seen the Judean wilderness with its barren hills and steep valleys. To Moses’ right was a bright spot, the oasis around Jericho. But overall, the immediate vicinity of Mount Nebo was desolate.

Moses had to look farther and higher to see that this was a good land. Farther to the west he would have seen the green mountaintops of the Judean and Samaritan highlands. But even then, the best land would have been beyond his view. The best land was on the western slopes of those highlands and far to the north in the Jezreel Valley and Galilee, where rain sufficient for agriculture falls.

Our view of eternal life

Did you climb Mount Nebo this year?

If you sat in a church pew as a mourner, you looked across your own Dead Sea, the coffin of your loved one. The floral arrangements added a splash of color like the Jericho oasis, but overall your loved one’s future seemed bleak and dry like the Judean wilderness.

How do you know the person in that casket crossed over into a good land? Look past the casket and the flowers. Like Moses, look farther and higher. Look up to the cross of Christ. The cross is the tree of life! It is the green on the mountaintops of Israel. There Jesus’ blood satisfied the deadly justice of God’s law. Through the cross we pass over from death to life.

Our loved ones have crossed over into a good land. But like Moses, so much of that land we are not able to see. We know it only by promise. How comforting that promise is! The saints in heaven “are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:15-17).