(27) This is what they told him: “We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. (28) However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the *Anakites *lit.children of giants there.
(31) But the other men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we.” (32) Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size; (33) we saw the Nephilim there—the Anakites are part of the Nephilim—and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
Why do the scouts exaggerate? What are they afraid of?
On the cusp of promise - Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Once limits become habitual, they become invisible: we don't even notice them anymore. We learn to live within a small space. We train ourselves not to grow beyond the box, because outside the box is scary. Outside the box the grapes are as big as beach balls. Outside the box we are afraid we will be as insignificant as grasshoppers.
Spiritual life calls us to recognize our own fear. To notice what buttons are pushed when we think about expanding beyond whatever our limits have been. To breathe into the paralyzing fear of failure, of smallness, of taking on something we won't be able to handle. And spiritual life calls us to breathe through that fear, and to step into the unknown.
How can we minimize the fears, that seem so big, in our own lives?