Read: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
“I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.”
If you’ve been in the church for a while, it’s easy to pin the choice to follow Jesus as something in your past. Many of us have varying stories about how we came to the church or came to accept the faith we were raised in. Additionally, it is easy to think that this choice is something that affects only our Sundays. But in this text God offers a choice TODAY! Each day offers us a call to obeying God or to be led astray. Each day gives us the opportunity to be drawn closer to God, to pick up the cross and follow, or to “bow down to other gods and serve them.”
Importantly though, God isn’t speaking to an individual but to the whole nation. As a church, it is easy to think that we follow God because we have a cross on the wall, but the path to life involves a spiritual as well as a physical commitment. This may seem like a perilous situation, but it is truly good news. God will never stop calling us and leading us toward the true life in the Holy Spirit through Christ. Just as the choice continually is presented to us, so too is the blessing of God’s presence a constant comfort and possibility. In this text, God has already made a covenant with Abraham which has been continually confirmed up to the passage through the Red Sea and the journey through the wilderness. God has never been on the questionable side of the covenant. Even today God’s promise is real and active, may we all be drawn ever closer to it.
Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious
favor, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our
works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify
thy holy Name, and finally, by thy mercy, obtain everlasting
life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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