When Thou Art Full

Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day.

Read the next three verses for the mechanism, because it is not the one most people brace for. Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God. The forgetting is scheduled for after the harvest. Moses is warning a generation about the danger of things going well.

Then he puts the sentence in their mouths, and it is one nobody says out loud. And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. In thine heart. It is the private working assumption of a competent adult who has been up early for twenty years and can account for every hour.

Notice that the verse defines its own word before anyone can spiritualise it. Forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes. Forgetting shows up as practices that quietly stop: the prayer that used to happen, the promise made in a harder year, the day set aside that got absorbed. The memory of God stays intact. The keeping is what went.

The correction is a sentence to say back. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth. Even the capacity was issued to you.

So pull out the best thing in your year, the one you would name if somebody asked, and account for it on paper in two columns: the parts you built, and the parts that were simply there when you arrived, the health and the timing and the people who happened to be standing where they stood. Do it before your heart does the other version.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 114 is Great Things (Psalm 126:3).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two