Scripture Daily

Context No. 1359 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 6:1-9: in context

1Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land that you go over to possess; 2that you might fear the LORD your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you—you, your son, and your son’s son, all the days of your life; and that your days may be prolonged. 3Hear therefore, Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may increase mightily, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised to you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. 4Hear, Israel: The LORD is our God. The LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. 6These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; 7and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. 9You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.

Here is the Shema, the words at the center of Israel's faith. Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And then Moses tells them what to do with these words: keep them on your heart, and teach them diligently to your children, talking of them when you sit at home and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise; bind them on your hand and forehead, write them on your doorposts and gates. The love of God is to be handed on, woven through the whole fabric of daily life.

Two things stand together here. First, the great command itself: love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, the whole self given over to loving God, holding nothing back. It is the command Jesus named the first of all, the summary of what a human being is for. Second, and this is what Moses dwells on, is how that love is passed to the next generation. He does not say to set up a school or to reserve the teaching for special religious occasions; he says to talk of these words at home and on the road, at bedtime and in the morning, to weave them through the ordinary moments of the day so that children absorb the love of God from the very texture of life. The faith is handed on not mainly through formal instruction but through a thousand ordinary conversations, through parents who carry these words on their own hearts and let them come out naturally as they sit and walk and rise and lie down. That is a searching picture for anyone entrusted with children. What we most deeply love is caught more than taught, absorbed by the young from the way we actually live and speak day by day. If the love of God is truly on our own hearts, it will come out in the ordinary moments, and that is how it passes to those who come after us.

Is the love of God truly on my own heart, and does it come out naturally in the ordinary moments of my days, the way faith is really passed on, or have I left the handing-on of what matters most to formal occasions and someone else?

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