“When you eat and are full, and build beautiful houses to live in, and your herds and flocks grow large, and your silver and gold multiply, and everything else you have increases, be careful that your heart doesn’t become proud and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.” – Deuteronomy 8:12-14
Prosperity and comfort have always been the greatest threats to our faith. When life is good and money is flowing we fool ourselves into thinking it’s because of our brilliance and hard work. We quickly forget the true source of our blessings. When we’re comfortable and the news is always good (at least for us), we forget the difficult times of the past and God’s faithfulness in those times. We’re easily blinded to how precarious our situation in this world is, how brief and small earthly life is in the scheme of eternity, and how necessary it is to walk with God every day.
This warning to the Israelites 3400 years ago might as well have been written to us today! We are a people who in our extreme prosperity and comfort forgot the difficulties of the past and we blind to the suffering of others, thinking it all to be some fascinating relic of a different generation or a far-off land. In the process, we forgot God Who has long been faithful. Now we’re experiencing a very stark reminder of just how precarious and unpredictable life can be and how fleeting is our comfort and control.
During this difficult season, may we all remember the Lord and humble ourselves before Him. May we recognize that He was always the source of our blessings and prosperity, that He called us to use them well for His glory, and that all too often we failed and fell short of that expectation. May we humbly seek His forgiveness in Christ and be faithful in sharing the good news of Jesus with those who don’t know Him, for it is Christ who brings us out of slavery to death, the very enemy that so many are suddenly quite afraid of!