In Every Moment | Deuteronomy 11:18-19

Photo Credit - Chatham Van Wingerden

"You shall therefore lay up these Words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting down, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

As Moses leaves the people of Israel, perched on the anxious precipice of entering the long awaited homeland, he says goodbye in the only way he knows how - with "words of (mine.)" The thing that he so terribly feared in the beginning of this journey, the words he was to say to the Hebrew people, now flow page over page like a river with an eternal, un-drying source. Aaron is dead and gone; there is no longer a need for a translator between Moses and his audience. 

So, go ahead and speak, Moses. Tell us what we ought to do. Tell us who we ought to become

You are to become that which you have never been. 

Israel, be faithful. Remember the past mistakes which resulted in circles upon bloody circles of wandering, and remember who you found at the beginning and end of each circle. Yourselves. You meet yourselves in the desert - time and time again, you see your true nature as a people. Remember the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 8:2) who tested and tried you in the shadows of the wild mountains, ringed with heat and sweat. Heat brings impurity to the surface, but you barely even needed the flames to show yourselves.

Israel, be honest. "Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, 'It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.'" For it is easy to make promises now when your belly is empty and your shoes are still dusty - on the day your stomach is full, however, you will be bloated with the poison of clouded eyes. And that day is coming, for the land past the Jordan is full of milk and honey. The hills that the Lord cares for (Deut. 11:11) are full of growing things. You will eat - you will forget. 

Israel, be circumcised. You understand symbols and blood. After all, you are the offspring of your father, that first man - all along, little pictures have made sense of the biggest truth to the children of dust. Now take the picture within, if you can stand such a thing, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart (Deut. 10:16) with the knife that doesn't dull. 

Mark yourselves forever as you move among a people you do not know, for we will all have to answer the question of "who?" "Who has brought you here among us to displace us?" "Who provides you with such success as to spring un-trampled from under the boot of every nation who hates you so?" "Who do I belong to?" Yes, the question even digs as deeply inward as that - you will begin to forget yourself.

Easy, Moses. You grow quick in your old age. Always running your mouth like you have somewhere to be! Tell us how to remember. Things are always slipping our minds these days. 

In the smallest of moments, in the flickers between the shifting gears of each day, there is a crack in the board. This is where you begin to forget the name of the Lord. Then, this crack grows to become a vacant slat in the floor, a missing board in the rafters, a slit in the drywall. The moments become the hours; the hours become the days; the days become the years. 

Your life is gone. You are an old man. You no longer know how to say His Name. 

Some of you are going to become farmers. So, while you farm, you lay the Words like seeds into the soil. You water them into your children as you walk to and fro between the rows of crops. You whisper them to yourself in the stillness of the night when there is no one left awake to hear you. And when you rise in the morning, pain throbbing in your bent back, they leave your lips to greet the sunrise with the rest of creation. 

Some of you are going to become accountants. So, while you count, you find the Words between the numbers and train your mind to see the patterns between them, hung like constellations. You count them beside your children, who are growing old before your eyes, and you write them into every byline that you can find. And when you sit down to calculate the way the world is going, the Words should be the only flow you feel the need to record with your ink and your paper.

And worst of all, some of you are going to become teachers of the Words. So, you're going to hear the Words day after day, dawn after dawn, and if you become stupid to them or blind to their width and height and breadth you're going to need to get small again, hunched down to the ground, and listen for the ancient song that mocks your arrogance. You're going to have to start over. You're going to have to learn to sing again.

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A little boy walks along with his father and mother towards Jerusalem. His knuckles are bruised and chipped away at - there is still sawdust clinging to the hem of his robe. They will go to the temple; they will offer sacrifice. But for now, there is only the open road and the heat of the Israeli sun. The Words are in the stroke of each tool against the wood, in each night that grows dark and cool in Nazareth, in each morning that He is taught to speak and pray. They are dropping from his father's mouth as they move along in the dust on the road, a man telling his child the truth as they are walking along the way.

The child was there when they were written. 

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Israel, be careful. Moses is reaching out his hands to steady you, but already you totter like a child walking for the first time and the ground in the Promised Land is not flat. Keep the memory of Yahweh between your eyes, tied as a sign on your hand, and when the door opens on the new life, in every moment, can you promise to savor His Word? To roll it around on your tongue so the flavor never dies? 

As we run headfirst into the land, we are to think of Him.

In doing so, every moment is given purpose.