Canter Bridge

If triumphalism means the unabashed loss of self-critical capacity because God is on our side, then triumphalism is always a bad idea.

Yet there are moments, in history as in the more domesticated circles of our own spirituality, when memory’s joyous recall of triumphant events is entirely a sweet thing. The historical prologue of Deuteronomy’s covenant renewal dynamic dabbles in such evocation of past victory. Though stained with the blood of defeated peoples, the canvas of this ‘fifth book of Moses’ is not white-washed with chest-pounding nationalism. There is enough proto-Israelite failure in these lines to render any eventual son or daughter of that nation to rue the somber strains of its origin songs.

Still, there is also this punctuation of events by invigorating nostalgia:

From Aroer on the edge of the Wadi Arnon (including the town that is in the wadi itself) as far as Gilead, there was no citadel too high for us. The LORD our God gave everything to us … At that time we captured all his towns; there was no citadel that we did not take from them—sixty towns, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

It is wise, particularly in times of low expectations and squeamish avoidance of anything that smacks of God’s empowering presence with us—with others is somehow not to be poo-pooed—to allow space for remembering the good old days when God bared his arm and gave us good things.

We were not giants, ever. But we knew the sounds of victory, relished God’s unmerited companionship, slapped each other on the back at grinning recognition that he was with us when we least expected such preternatural supervision of our quotidian battles.

There was no citadel too high.

We have known some very high ones hence, we have stumbled away from the shadow of one or two in abject ruin.

But the taste was so sweet, lingers so long in our mouths, that we shall not decide that victory again will never be ours.