Daily Devotional • March 14
A Reading from Deuteronomy 10:12-22
12 “So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lordyour God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the Lord your God; him you shall serve; to him you shall hold fast; and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.
Meditation
Our worship of God must comprehend our entire life. We are to know, follow, serve, love, and obey God because that is the purpose for which he created us and called us to himself in his love and mercy. It is not that we earn the good we will experience, but that we will experience the good which is the fulfillment of our existence. But being God’s people and the objects of his love and mercy is a matter not of outward observance but inner attitude and motivation. The God who so loves must be loved in return. What is required as a response to God’s love is a relationship and not slavish ritual. Each of the verbs, to know, follow, serve, love, and obey, describes an action that is indicative of a relationship.
The Lord’s commands reveal God’s nature so that we can be in proper relationship with him. By obeying them, we also participate in the created order as the image of God. That is our response of praise. Unlike secular wisdom, which states on the one hand that humankind is just another species of mammal, but on the other bemoans our disproportionate negative effect on the cosmic environment, Scripture maintains the special place of human beings as God’s vice-regents in creation. When we live in loving obedience to God, we live as we were created to live and are revealed as God’s chosen vessels of his revelation to the world.
Rather than a stimulus for pride, however, God’s choice of human beings, and a small subpopulation of humankind at that, should be the motivation for humility. We have nothing to do with it—it is all due to the love, grace, and mercy of God.
Chuck Alley is a retired Episcopal priest (St. Matthew’s, Richmond, Va.), and an adjunct associate professor of anatomy on the medical faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University. Avocationally, he is an avid woodworker.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee
The Diocese of West Malaysia – Church of the Province of South East Asia
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
