Daily Devotional • March 13
A Reading from Deuteronomy 9:23-10:5
23 And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and occupy the land that I have given you,’ you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, neither trusting him nor obeying him. 24 You have been rebellious against the Lord as long as he has known you.
25 “Throughout the forty days and forty nights that I lay prostrate before the Lord when the Lord intended to destroy you, 26 I prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, do not destroy your people, your very own possession, whom you redeemed in your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27 Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; pay no attention to the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin, 28 lest the land from which you have brought us say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them and because he hated them, he has brought them out to let them die in the wilderness.” 29 For they are your people, your very own possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’
1 “At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.’ 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 4 Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lordgave them to me. 5 So I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and there they are, as the Lord commanded me.”
Meditation
The prayer of Moses for the rebellious and condemned people of Israel begins with the acknowledgement of God as the Sovereign God who is able to save them even from their rebellion against him. He takes God so seriously that he will not even lift his face out of the dirt when he addresses God. “I am only dust and to dust I shall return, but you, O God, are the eternal and unchanging Creator and Redeemer of the world.” This is not a casual, friendly conversation, but rather a life and death petition to One who has the power of life.
As an act of mourning and grief, Moses fasts and prays for forty days. His petition is persistent and sacrificial. Both the length and seriousness of Moses’ prayer demonstrate the earnestness with which he petitions the Lord. According to Moses’ example, we are to pray for others until there is an answer in God’s perfect time, not according to our endurance or schedule, but until the need no longer exists.
Prayers of intercession are also to be specific. We are to ask God specifically to do something. We do not know what God’s will might be in every circumstance, but that is no excuse for keeping our prayers general. God loves us and wants to know what is on our hearts. We are to love our neighbors and to demonstrate that by taking the time and effort to express specifically what we desire for them. We are to acknowledge that God is sovereign, and accept his ultimate answer, but that does not mean we are to refrain from asking him to intervene according to our love for our neighbor.
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.
♱
Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
The Diocese of Southern Malawi – The Church of the Province of Central Africa
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
