"Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills."

Deuteronomy 8:6-7

Review the various verbs used in this chapter to describe what the Lord has done to Israel in the past: led, humbled, tested, causing you to hunger, feeding you, disciplines. Turn to reflect on your own life. Have you experienced hard times, ‘that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions’ (v. 15)? With hindsight, how do you sum up the contribution of those hard times to your discipleship? Have you also experienced the provision of clothes that did not wear out and unswollen feet (v. 4)?

Observe the verbs describing the Israelites’ future: be careful to follow, remember, observe, walking in obedience, praise the Lord your God, do not forget. The description of ‘the good land’ (vv. 7, 😎 the Israelites are going to possess is rapturous, climaxing with ‘you will lack nothing’ (v. 9). What dangers does the Lord foresee flowing from these times of plenty? The chapter ends by returning to the danger of idolatry—three times the bell tolls with the word ‘destroyed’ (vv. 19, 20). Turn to reflect on your own life again. What particular threats have success and prosperity brought to your discipleship? Have pride and self-satisfaction drowned your zeal and extinguished your desire to pray?

Think about ‘remembering’2 and ‘forgetting’, words that occur like a refrain in Deuteronomy (and also in Psalms and Jeremiah). These are not just intellectual concepts in Deuteronomy. Remembering is to follow, to do, to obey; forgetting is to ignore or repudiate. Memory is the guardian of our consciences, and also the basis of our civilizations.

Closing Prayer

I pray for myself and my society, Lord God, with gratitude for the ‘good land’ that you have given me, with penitence for pride, self-satisfaction, and hardness of heart (edited from Encounter with God).