Sometimes I think we miss the emotive quality of the words we read in Scripture. I hear Moses talking to the Hebrew people today saying something like, "I've said a lot here today. And you now have a choice. You can choose blessings or you can choose curses. If you choose blessing, get what I just said through those thick heads of yours and live this life rightly and for YHWH!!!!!"
The opening phrasing for this Sunday's OT/HB lesson is a famous one.
"...put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates..."
We have stopped doing all these things. Our churches don't really teach what it means to follow Jesus. Our houses are suitcase villages for a people connected, it seems, by last name only. Our doorposts, hands, and foreheads are without the Word. And, it seems to me, for the most part, we have chosen curses.
But I think the promises of God through Moses remain. We can choose blessing by turning our attention to God. By having his commands in our hearts and on our minds so strongly that they influence every decision we make from our career to where we will grocery shop (still working on letting God overrule the wallet on that one).
It is about immersing ourselves in the Kingdom lifestyle, about getting it through our thick skulls that Jesus offered the perfect example of God's will for life on earth, about being a people focused in all things on God.
As Moses said elsewhere - choose life!
1 comment:
Steve - this is good stuff. Especially "Our churches don't really teach what it means to follow Jesus." We do need to reclaim this. When churches DO teach this - in scattered congregations/experiences - amazing things happen. But you've named the challenge.
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