Remember the Way

Look down at your feet. Imagine walking in the same pair of sandals for forty years, across sand and rock and thorn. And at the end of it all, your feet are not even swollen. Moses wants his people to remember that.

The people of Israel are camped on the plains of Moab, at the edge of the promised land. Old Moses is giving them his last words before they cross the Jordan. Most of them have known nothing but the wilderness: tents, sand, wandering from one camp to the next. Now everything is about to change. Ahead are farms and towns, houses and harvests. Moses knows that good times can be dangerous too. So in chapter eight he says one word, again and again. Remember.

Remember the whole way, Moses says, that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness. He let you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, a food you had never seen, and your parents had never seen. Each morning it lay on the ground, enough for each day. Why? To teach you that people do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out on you. Your feet did not swell, all these forty years. Think about it, Moses says. Just as a father trains his child, so the LORD your God has been training you.

And now look where he is taking you. The LORD is bringing you into a good land. A land of streams and springs, with water flowing in the valleys and the hills. A land of wheat and barley, of grapevines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive oil and honey. A land where you will eat bread and never run short of anything. A land whose rocks have iron in them, and whose hills you can dig for copper. Can you hear how the people's hearts must have leapt? After forty years of sand, a land like that. And Moses tells them what to do when they get there. When you have eaten and are full, bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Say thank you.

Then his voice grows serious. Be careful, he says, that you do not forget the LORD. One day you will have fine houses to live in. Your flocks and herds will grow. Your silver and gold will pile up. And your heart could grow proud, and you could forget the God who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery. Who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, with its snakes and scorpions and thirsty ground. Who brought you water out of hard rock. Who fed you with manna. You might say to yourself: my own strength and my own hands made me rich. No. Remember the LORD your God. He is the one who gives you the power to gain wealth.

Jewish tradition came to call the seven foods in Moses' list the seven species: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and honey, which many understand as honey made from dates. The Mishnah, an early collection of Jewish teaching, says that the first ripe fruits brought to the temple as thanksgiving offerings were to come from these seven alone. Moses' list of good gifts became a way of saying thank you.

Remember the way. You'll find these words in Deuteronomy chapter eight. Manna in the morning, water from the rock, sandals that never wore out, and a warning never to forget who gave it all. When Jesus was hungry in the wilderness, he answered temptation with words from this very chapter. So here is a question to carry with you. What has God given you that you could stop and thank him for today?