This is last week's Lenten devotional. We had to skip a week because of snow and sleet. The weather in Minnesota almost always manages to give us a little surprise.

NRSV Deuteronomy 6:1 Now this is the commandment-- the statutes and the ordinances-- that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
NRSV Deuteronomy 6:20 When your children ask you in time to come, "What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?" 21 then you shall say to your children, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 The LORD displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. 23 He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. 24 Then the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case. 25 If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right."

PASSING IT DOWN

I have a friend who has a relative who is worried about leaving things to her children. That is a way of keeping precious things in the family. That is a good impulse for someone in their later years, but my friend wishes the relative would be more decisive about it. The plan constantly shifts back and forth. The list keeps changing. It is sometimes hard to figure out whether it is going forward or backward. One concern is what they will do with it. Another is whether each gift fits the individual. Decisions are made and unmade.

As we have been considering these weeks of Lent, the Book of Deuteronomy contains the speeches Moses gave the people right before they were about to enter the Promised Land. It is a plan for entering the Promised Land and staying there. The land is their inheritance. God promised it to them long ago and that has not changed. But staying there could be as tricky as getting into it. God makes a covenant with the people of Israel and the land is part of that covenant, so when the people cease to be in the covenant, cease fulfilling their part of the covenant, then their future, their inheritance, their living in the land, is in question. So it is very important that they keep it.

And so, part of this is learning, learning the covenant, learning the relationship with God, again and again, over and over, from generation to generation. It is not just repeating the words; it is finding the meaning of faith. That is why when the children ask they should have an answer for them. We should too. That is what Christian Education is. It is so that our children, like the children of the Israelites, have a faith of their own, like an inheritance, something given to them, but given away, given as we let go of it into their own hands, so that it can be their own. It is it is so they can have lives of faith that sustain them all through their lives.

What we learn in life, even very early in life, is important in who we become and how we see God and ourselves. W. Frederick Wooden tells the story of when he was a boy, not athletic, who could only climb one or two branches of the neighborhood tree. The evening before they moved out of the neighborhood, he made one last attempt. He went to the top and looked around and fifty years later still remembers that. The most important learning is about who we are and what we can do, not what we have.

God is giving a message to Moses. And Moses is giving it to the Israelites about this great inheritance. It is not furniture, not stocks and bonds, or cattle, or antiques, or coin collections, or houses, or something else. It is the knowledge of what is most important and what God is doing and who they are. It is that the meaning of their faith is who God is and who they are and what their relationship to God is. They are to pass this on from generation to generation. How they live according to those things will determine their future. How they teach them, will determine their future’s future.

The most important thing is this: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” And they are to learn the people’s story. “Who are we?” they might ask. “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors.” And what are they to do? “Love God.”

They are to recite the words, to learn them over and over. That is their truth, their story, their inheritance. These great truths are a gift. An inheritance is a gift, to our children and children’s children, and to their children. It is what makes life possible. If there is anything worth passing down it is these. When your children ask.