April 7: I don't handle prosperity very well

Deuteronomy 31:1-32:27

Luke 12:8-34

Psalm 78:32-55

Proverbs 12:21-23

Reading Deuteronomy 31 v16, v19-20, and then v29, I was astonished at the clarity of God's Word and Moses's prophecy - that the Israelites, having feasted on God's goodness, mercy and salvation, would reject Him, turn away, and turn to other gods, that "these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering.  They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them."  Not only that, God, through Moses, told them, warned them that they would.  And yet it made no difference.  They could not handle the prosperity; they lost sight of the giver because they focused their attention on the gift.

This happens a lot - certainly to me.  My faith does not handle prosperity well.  I start to think that whatever success I might enjoy was because of my work, my effort.  What hubris, from someone who, as he wrote this, could not even tell you for certain he was going to be alive to finish the sentence much less plan a future, plot a course that would guarantee the achievement of my heart's aspirations.   In that regard, I am like the fool who planned for a future of comfort assuming he still had long to live.  The truth, as I continually discover (helped in no part by raising a teenage daughter and knowing there are boys out there just like I was when I used to date teenage girls), there is NOTHING that is in my control - not my future, distant or near, and certainly not the future of the wife and children I so deeply love, for whom I only want what's best. 

Such uncertainty, such the opposite of prosperity, would seem like a recipe for despair.  Funny enough, it isn't - because it is precisely that inability to depend on myself that, hopefully, will disabuse me of any grandiose assumptions of my own abilities, and will redirect my focus from the gifts , back to the Giver.  And then, having reconnected with Him, I will realize that I need not "worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear."  I will know that, like the ravens, who "do not sow or reap...[who] have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them", God will provide for me, for my wife, and for our kids since, after all, "how much more valuable you are than birds!"

Dear God, we live in a world that instills in us the importance of self sufficiency, that puts great value on being able to depend on one's self.  Please do whatever it takes to remind us how false that premise is, and and to open our hearts and our minds to Your love, Your plans, and Your provision.  Teach us to know the plans You have for us, to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future.