Have you ever been cursed? Have you ever been blessed? What's the difference?
I know that these may be kind of strange questions, but in today's passage, Moses outlined blessings and curses for the Israelites tied to their obedience (or disobedience) to God. Here's an interesting part of the passage about curses:
God will send The Curse, The Confusion, The Contrariness
down on everything you try to do
until you've been destroyed and there's nothing left of you—
all because of your evil pursuits that led you to abandon me.
God will infect you with The Disease,
God will infect you with The Disease,
wiping you right off the land that you're going in to possess.
God will set consumption and fever and rash
God will set consumption and fever and rash
and seizures and dehydration and blight and jaundice on you.
They'll hunt you down until they kill you.
Okay, I know this sounds pretty morbid (at least I didn't copy the text about cannibalism!), but a few things tied to this curse stood out to me--confusion and consumption. I think those two things really define the existence of may people in our world who don't have God--or even Christians who have forgotten what it means to really know and follow Him. If people don't grasp who God is and the fact that He has a purpose for their lives, it makes almost every part of life confusing. If they don't find contentment and hope in Him, they look for it in things or ideas--they become consumed with consuming so much that it becomes an unfillable void.
On the flip side, I love what this passage says about the blessings for those who live in obedience to God:
If you listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God,
and heartily obey all his commandments that I command you today,
God, your God, will place you on high,
high above all the nations of the world.
All these blessings will come down on you
and spread out beyond you because you have responded
to the Voice of God, your God:
God's blessing inside the city,
God's blessing in the country;
God's blessing on your children,
the crops of your land,
the young of your livestock,
the calves of your herds,
the lambs of your flocks.
God's blessing on your basket and bread bowl;
God's blessing in your coming in,
God's blessing in your going out...
Tomorrow: Deuteronomy 30-31
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