Daily Devotional

January 20, 2021

“Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place his name there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out...

January 19, 2021

“And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers.” (Deuteronomy 13:17)

I could not sleep. Memories spun through my head, filling my heart with sadness. Anna and I were good friends. We had many things in common — our personalities clicked. We had shared...

January 18, 2021

“And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?” (Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

Do you remember when you first tried to hit...

January 17, 2021

“Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee.” (Deuteronomy 9:4)

“Please? Please, Daddy? Can I help make the macaroni?” It was a familiar plea our little girl was making, but this day was different....

January 16, 2021

“All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers.” (Deuteronomy 8:1)

One afternoon, our eighth grade home economics class was divided into groups of four and instructed to follow a recipe. No problem, I thought — until we started. One of us wrote down the recipe, one gathered ingredients, etc. We all...

January 15, 2021

“And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.” (Deuteronomy 5:1)

To “hear” means much more than to simply be aware of an auditory sound. How many times children hear their parents’ voices but simply ignore them, either because they are preoccupied or merely not interested in what is being...

January 14, 2021

“Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” (Deuteronomy 4:23-24)

Have you ever thought the word jealous could have a positive connotation? Consider one of its meanings: “very watchful in guarding.”...

January 13, 2021

“Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. And the Lord said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon.” (Deuteronomy 3:1-2)

Have...

January 12, 2021

“Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward.” (Deuteronomy 2:3)

My husband tells of a time when, as a young man on vacation with his family, he and his younger sister left their camping spot and began climbing the sand dunes nearby. He quickly became disoriented; after crossing the tops of a few dunes, he no longer could tell which way he had come. He felt very vulnerable in the vast wasteland. In...

January 11, 2021

“Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.” (Deuteronomy 1:8)

After living in the same community for over thirty years, my family moved to a different state. There were many new things for us to experience. We had a...