Friday, November 03, 2006

why forgetting everything may not be the best way to go about it...

Last weekend my grandpa forgot everything. Well not everything, just the stuff that was important. Lucky for him it was just a reaction between too much sinus medicine and his blood pressure meds. And he’s ok now.

Even though it was very serious, it was still really funny. He kept trying to say things to make people laugh, but he’d forget what he would say. So apparently he told my grandma that she was his third wife. That’s funny cause they’ve been married since he was 19. He doesn’t remember the fact that he said it, but who knows maybe he’ll use this memory loss thing as an excuse for the next couple of years.

Deuteronomy is a book that is based on remembering. The whole book is most likely Moses’ final address to the people before they go into the Promised Land and he went up the mountain for the final time. But what are they to remember?

You see Deuteronomy comes at the end of the people’s time in the desert. When they first left Egypt God leads the people to Mt Sinai. It is here that God will give them the Law. Before He begins God explains the purpose behind the Laws he is about to give. God says to Moses, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

God tells Moses that he has set the Hebrews free from bondage and has set them apart from the nations so that they can be His priests to the nations. He sets up Laws that the nation is to follow that promote freedom and hope. Thus their message is a message of freedom from bondage, a message of hope. This is what they are to remember.

His whole message was you have to remember who you are. If you forget who you are than what good will you be to the nations? How can you be a priest if you don’t remember the message?

People are suffocating around us. They are desperate for hope and they think that they get freedom by throwing away God. They think that God holds them back and what they’re really doing is putting on more chains of bondage. But what the world really needs is to see people living a life of freedom, a life of hope. The world needs the priests of God to stand up and show the God that wants to free them from their bondage.