What did you get ...

October 24, 2007

Deuteronomy 6:10-12 NET
(10) Exhortation to Worship the Lord Exclusively

Then when the LORD your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you — a land with large, fine cities you did not build,
(11) houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant — and you eat your fill,
(12) be careful not to forget the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery.


One night last week, storms hit the Tulsa area where I live. I was at work, trying to get computers fixed at the college where I work. I was really getting grumpy because, just as soon as I would get a computer back to a state where I could work on it, the lights would go out and I would have to wait for them to come back on again. Now I had not worked for or owned those computers. I did not pay for the problem electricity. I was just a guy getting paid to do a job. Why was I getting so upset.

What I did not realize till I got home was that across the street from the college was a mobile home park. In one of those mobile homes, a guy was getting up to get himself a bowl of cereal. As he moved into the kitchen area, a tree fell across his house, right where he would have been sitting. He lost his home.

So often we get upset with things that we should not be getting upset with. And stuff that does not even belong to us. And if it does belong to us, who gave us the power to get it in the first place. Let us make sure that we do not forget the LORD who gave us what we have.