Daily Devotional • March 11
A Reading from Deuteronomy 9:4-12
4 “When the Lord your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to occupy this land’; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. 5 It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lordyour God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that the Lord made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
6 “Know, then, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. 7 Remember; do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness; you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place.
8 “Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. 9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water. 10 And the Lord gave me the two stone tablets written with the finger of God; on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken to you at the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. 11 At the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 12 Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up; go down quickly from here, for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have been quick to turn from the way that I commanded them; they have cast an image for themselves.’
Meditation
God is a generous and merciful God, giving good things to those who do not deserve them simply because of his righteousness. He is also a just God who punishes the wickedness of those who reject him. And he is the God of steadfast love and fidelity who acts according to what he has promised.
God’s most generous and merciful gift to us is our eternal salvation. Jesus, the Son of God, lived in the world and died on the cross in order that we might be reconciled to God. That happened because there was no possible way of us being reconciled to God through our own efforts. We are the problem, not the solution.
But like the Hebrews in the wilderness, we are quick to substitute our idols for the true Christ. Our golden calves may not be as obvious, but they are ever-present in our lives. Most of the time they are in the form of “Jesus + _.” We fill in the blank with our own practices, rituals, and desires. We meet the true Jesus in worship and Bible study, but when we get back down to the valley of everyday life, we live among the calves of our own choosing.
There is nothing we can add to what Jesus has done. To add anything to a perfect sphere makes it something other than a sphere. Likewise, to add our unrighteousness to Jesus’ righteousness can do nothing other than make that righteousness unrighteous. In short, the victory is the Lord’s and only in him can we know our deliverance.
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:
All Saints’, Beverly Hills, California
The Diocese of Lake 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.
