May we never forget!

Saturday 3-7-15 (Home) Scripture reading: Deut 5-6  Ps 43  Mark 14

S.  Deut 6:11-13 You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land, be careful not to forget the LORD, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.  NLT

O.  Moses was explaining to the Israelites how they would soon occupy the “Promised Land” where they would reap many blessings that they had never sowed.  He is warning them to not forget the depth of slavery from where God had delivered them… and where they would still be, if He had not intervened.

A.  Oh how easy it is to forget, especially when we are handed blessings that others who came before us struggled to obtain. 

My grandfather, William Frank Hiatt, established a “homestead” in the northern coastal mountains near Mist, Oregon.  All the best farm land had already been claimed by earlier homesteaders.  This area was all mountains covered with trees and brush.  My dad told me that they had to use dynamite to clear the stumps of the trees they felled in order to clear some land to farm.  That is where my father was born, along with my grandmother Malinda’s 13 other children, 11 of them boys.  

Dad moved to Portland when he started raising his own family.  He bought a house with a small plot of land behind it.  And he planted trees.  We had three kinds of plums, peaches, apricots, four kinds of cherries, apples, pears, quince, raspberries and grapes.  We harvested an abundance of fruit each year and canned it for the winter.  Often we had such an abundance that we kids would take our wagon, loaded with fruit, to share with our neighbors. 

What an inheritance!  What abundance!  I never purchased land.  I never planted a tree, but I lived on the blessing that my grandfathers (on both sides) and my parents had acquired at great sacrifice. 

And the greatest blessing of all was the spiritual heritage passed down to us.  All five of us children chose to follow the Jesus Christ of our fathers and grandfathers and to do so with all of our hearts.  And now that I am pushing toward my closing days on this planet, I am asking myself, “What am I leaving for my children and grandchildren?”  As they bathe in the abundance of their blessings, will they forget their God Who is the Source of it all?  Will they allow the pull of their peers to drag them into meaningless lives spent only upon pleasing themselves?

P.  Dear Lord, hear my prayer.  In my struggle to reach out and save the lost of other cultures, may I not lose my own children to the futile gods of this world!  As I watch our nation crash into the deep chasm of dark godlessness, where sinful acts are esteemed as normal and legal, I cry out for my descendants.  Will they, like the Israelites, forget their Creator God, the God that has lifted them from the depths of sin’s slavery to extreme heights of spiritual joy and material blessing?  I plead with You, my God, don’t let them fall into the mud-pit of seeking happiness, wealth and entertainment for themselves and losing sight of You, the True Source of every precious gift they have inherited.  Amen.

Ralph