Listen

But watch yourself! Don’t forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, don’t become arrogant, forgetting the Lord your God:

the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery; the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water; the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock; the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end.

Deuteronomy 8:11-16

Think

How do you “don’t forget” something important?

Write it on a sticky note and put it somewhere you’ll be sure to see it? Set a notification on your phone? Jot it on a calendar page, or write it on your hand (and then be sure not to wash it off)?

How does your family remember important people, events, activities? Do you keep scrapbooks, diaries, letters, boxes of mementos deep in storage closets? Do you tell and retell stories around the dinner table?

The writer of Deuteronomy teaches us two ways to “don’t forget” the God who brings us closer and closer to the promised land. First, we actively live out God’s commands to us. It’s not enough to learn about them. Remembering means doing what we have been taught. Then, we tell and retell the stories of God’s activity in our lives, the ways God has been at work in our journey. It’s not enough to reach our destination. Remembering means paying attention all along the way.

Nikki Finkelstein-Blair

Pray

Thank you, God, for the instructions you give for my life; help me to live them, not just learn them.

Thank you for the work you do in my life; help me to pay attention so I can see your hand.

Thank you for being with me all this way; help me to remember well.

Amen.

Go

Give thanks to God, who has come with you all this way.

Give thanks to God, whose presence surrounds you now.

Give thanks to God, who is already preparing you for the road ahead.