This is last night's devotional. Next week we wrap up the series based on Moses' instructions to the Israelite people right before they enter the Promised Land.

This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. 2 Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. 3 He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the LORD your God disciplines you. 6 Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10 You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you.

11 Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12 When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16 and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. 19 If you do forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the LORD is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 8:1-20, NRSV)

“Poor But Honest”

My dad used to joke that he came from a “poor but dishonest” family. Now, I know that explaining a joke makes it even less funny, but it was, of course, not true. Pat and Hattie were some of the most honest people around. Grandma used to say that no honest work was bad work. And, if you think about it, a person who is dishonest and poor is either dumb or lazy. I think why my dad thought it was funny was that it was a parody of many of the biographies of some years back which stressed that the person came from “poor but honest” parents and rose by his or her own abilities to become great and famous. The name for such a person back then was the “self-made man”.

Dad never forgot where he came from. He grew up in the Great Depression and never forgot it. My uncle described their family dinners as potatoes and bologna, potatoes and bologna, potatoes and bologna. People from that era include both folks who, having undergone severe deprivation, went on to spend lavishly on whatever they wanted, never to feel deprived again. And it included others who saved everything because hard times might come again. It was not an easy time and not all the people who lived through it were poor but honest. My dad tells the story of a man who visited a friend at a job site with a bottle of whisky, had a few too many drinks with the friend, then called the boss to report the employee was drunk on the job, then applied for the open position the next day. The experience of poverty tests people. It makes some people kinder, other people meaner.

The reading from Deuteronomy is about the other experience. It is about the experience of prosperity. We might not think that such a condition is dangerous, but the reading cautions the Israelites about it. When they go into the land that God has promised them, they will have new temptations. In the desert they were tempted to doubt God’s care and to forget God’s directions. The wandering in the wilderness was to test what was in their hearts. Arriving in the land will, too.
The Promised Land will have flowing streams, wheat and barley, honey and olives, vines and figs and pomegranates. There will be no scarcity, they will lack nothing, and they will bless the Lord. Then the possibility for trouble begins. The warning is not to forget God in the abundance. It is not to forget God’s commandments. And it is not to exalt themselves, to think that they are self-made people, the source of their own prosperity, when, in fact, it is the gift of God. We don’t like this idea of testing, that there is another hurdle. We like the idea that when we become prosperous, we “have it made” or “have arrived”.

The reaction to poverty tests people. The choices we make when things are going well count every bit as much as those we make when things are not prosperous. We don’t like to hear that. We want to be comfortable and assume that the state of being wealthy is entirely good. Prosperity, or the desire to be prosperous, can distract us and blind us in many ways.

There are some dangers with wealth or with being preoccupied with getting ahead. One is how people can hide in it. They feel free from life’s realities. We can begin to think that money is the meaning of life. Henry David Thoreau went out to the woods near Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, over 150 years ago. There he lived off the land, as simply as possible in a cabin, as an experiment in living, as he put it: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear …”

Prosperity can change how we treat others. It can change how we see ourselves. The stories of many successful people emphasize how they achieved success, not where they have come from. They forgot how others helped them and the opportunities that came their way. Prosperity can make some people vain. Prosperity can make people more greedy and fearful. Those are some of the ways prosperity tests us as much as poverty does.

The answer for the Israelites is to recall how they came to the land. They are to remember their path, their story. It was under God’s leading and protection and care. That did not begin on the day they came into the Promised Land. It is also that they are to remember the One who brought them to the land. The Israelites are to remember that they are God’s people. They are not self-made. The land is a gift. Their abundance is to include kindness, generosity, humility, and gratitude. Only then will they live in the land well, and be truly well-off.