Meditation

Hi there,

Today's passage, the shortest of the whole season, sits at the center of the Shema and is a pivot point from recognizing God for who He is and experiencing the blessings of obedience to His commands to the consequences of letting our faith wane.

The swift, stark shift from the blessings of obedience we wrote out yesterday to the admonishment to "Be careful" lest we be enticed away highlights how easily that can happen and how present the risk is.

Faith is not a given, even if the gifts of obedience are so self-evident and plentiful.

The consequences of withholding our obedience are the withholding of blessings, and as we saw from yesterday's passage and the Desiring God article I linked to, the blessings themselves are a wonder and a miracle.

The loss of the rains foreshadows the greater loss of God's nearness, presence, and provision.

Today's text is Deuteronomy 11:16-17. Today's verses are in black. Previous and subsequent days in grey for context

Love and Serve the Lord

¹³ So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴ then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil.

¹⁵ I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

¹⁶ Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them.

¹⁷ Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you.

¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Encouragement

¹³ “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, ¹⁴ if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:13-14

Andy

God’s word in your hand

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