IF
IF you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin on you today, if you love the Lord your God and follow his ways,
if you keep his commandments, his laws, his customs, you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to make your own.
Walter Brueggemann has written an interesting book, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise and Challenge in Biblical Faith, in which he explores Israel’s history of salvation through the dynamic of the promise of land, acquiring the land and staying in the land. As landless Israel wanders in the wilderness it is the promise of land which keeps them going. But with land comes responsibility. For the writers of Deuteronomy faithfulness to God and God’s commands is everything. Entering and being able to stay in the land both depend on this faithfulness.
The Deuteronomist writers put this speech in the mouth of Moses at the end of years of wandering in the desert. It’s a seminal speech and marks a physical and spiritual transition for God’s people. They stand at a boundary and are offered a choice. It’s a real choice. The three ‘if’ clauses reassuringly lay out exactly what is expected of the Israelites. If they are able to open their hearts and make a choice then they are promised life in all of its complexity and richness.
Choose life, then, so that you and
your descendants may live in the love
of the Lord your God,
obeying his voice and clinging to him:
for in this your life consists…
Our lives are made up of a myriad of small choices. God still speaks to us today, offering us choices. Baptism has bound us to the life of God and planted within us the capacity to ‘keep his commandments, his laws, his customs.’ It’s all within our grasp and promises us life.
Is God calling you to make a particular choice this Lent?
(Deuteronomy 30:15-20. Thurs after Ash Wednesday)