Contemplative Bible Reading

Deuteronomy 8:1-5 (New Living Translation)

Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors. ² Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. ³ Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. ⁵ Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the Lord your God disciplines you for your own good.

Notice verse 3, God let the people go hungry. Why would a loving God let people border on starvation? That is not love, is it? It is not love as I understand it, but there is much about God that I do not understand.

God did that so He could teach the people. That’s not fair, at least not the sense of fairness that I understand. If God wants to teach me something, let him do it my way. Oooops. Now I am telling God how to conduct Himself. Isn’t that backwards?

Anyways, God teaches the people that bread, that stuff from wheat that comes out of the dirt, is not the source of life – God is the source of life. Well, I guess that makes sense, but couldn’t God teach lessons the way I like? That would sure be easier on me, and…

There we go again.

asdf