MEMORIES OF RECESS
Morning Devotional February 1, 2012
For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 7:6.
When you think of being chosen, does your mind go back to recess days on that schoolyard playground long ago, when Teacher asked the two biggest boys in the class to choose up teams for some sport in which winning mattered? Remember how the rest of you lined up, dutifully waiting for your name to be called? And remember how you stood there, nervously holding your breath, shifting your weight from one sneaker to the other, hoping against hope that this time you’d be chosen? But as the captains picked their choosy way through that line that was getting shorter and shorter with every name called out, a line that still had you in it, did the dreadful thought occur to you, I may not get chosen at all. Guess I’ll have to stand on the sidelines again and watch the kids who were “chosen” play their game?
Some of us painfully know that it’s no fun not to be chosen. Whether it’s an election for president or an invitation to a party, nobody likes to be left out.
So what shall we do with these words of God dutifully relayed to the children of Israel by their aged leader Moses? Forty years of wilderness wandering are nearly over. Except for Joshua and Caleb, an entire generation older than 60 is now dead. These words are a part of the longest farewell in sacred literature, as one last time Moses reviews with the grown-up children God’s leadership throughout the past four decades. Their mothers and fathers, and grandparents are all dusty burial mounds in the wilderness behind them. Unbelief has robbed an entire generation of the Promised Land. And even their beloved senior leader will in few days climb a lonely mountain and die alone this side of Canaan, the very high price for the moral accountability of spiritual leaders.
“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself.” There really isn’t a politically correct way to put this. Moses simply pronounces the truth. Over all the peoples of the human race, you---this liberated band of slaves from Egypt---have been chosen by God to be His own “special treasure.” Period. But in our age of egalitarian fairness, this hardly seems polite or proper, does it? Unless of course, being chosen is more about God than us. (The Chosen by Dwight K Nelson p. 42)