January Reading from The Message
The entire calendar is under the sweep of God’s caring eyes. Past and future are held together by his love and his promises. Like the Hebrews moving into new land, God knows the journey you have been on. As the new year begins, do not forget his commandments and the promises he has in store for you…
So it’s you who are in charge of keeping the entire commandment that I command you today so that you’ll have the strength to invade and possess the land that you are crossing the river to make your own. Your obedience will give you a long life on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors and their children, a land flowing with milk and honey.
10-12 The land you are entering to take up ownership isn’t like Egypt, the land you left, where you had to plant your own seed and water it yourselves as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are about to cross the river and take for your own is a land of mountains and valleys; it drinks water that rains from the sky. It’s a land that God, your God, personally tends—he’s the gardener—he alone keeps his eye on it all year long.
13-15 From now on if you listen obediently to the commandments that I am commanding you today, love God, your God, and serve him with everything you have within you, he’ll take charge of sending the rain at the right time, both autumn and spring rains, so that you’ll be able to harvest your grain, your grapes, your olives. He’ll make sure there’s plenty of grass for your animals. You’ll have plenty to eat.
16-17 But be vigilant, lest you be seduced away and end up serving and worshiping other gods and God erupts in anger and shuts down Heaven so there’s no rain and nothing grows in the fields, and in no time at all you’re starved out—not a trace of you left on the good land that God is giving you.
18-21 Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night. Inscribe them on the doorposts and gates of your cities so that you’ll live a long time, and your children with you, on the soil that God promised to give your ancestors for as long as there is a sky over the Earth.
Scripture Insight
Under the Sweep of God’s Caring Eyes
The book of Deuteronomy takes the past and puts it together with the present in such a way that we can move into the future with a heightened expectation of having God’s promises fulfilled in our lives. Deuteronomy 11:1-17 does this in the transitional setting of moving from the old year to the new year. In the middle of the passage is this sentence: “It’s a land that God, your God, personally tends—he’s the gardener—he alone keeps his eye on it all year long” (11:12)—from the beginning of the year to the end of it.
The entire calendar is under the sweep of God’s caring eyes. Past and future are held together by his love and his promises. Because God sees the beginning of the year and the end of the year in a caring way, we’re able to link up our past with our future. Once we see God in the year past, we can respond to him properly in the year ahead. The one great thing we know about the year ahead is that God is in it. His presence in it is more significant than anything else that is there—more significant, in fact, than everything else that is there.
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