These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
- Deuteronomy 6:6-9
By the time you’re reading this, my family and I will have begun our trip to America’s Rust Belt, where we plan to visit three major league ballparks, a national park, and Niagara Falls—not to mention eating some delicious food. But before we do any of that, there’s one little obstacle we’ll have to navigate: airport security.
Since 2001, those who fly regularly have gotten accustomed to the various rules: shoes off, empty your pockets, laptops and electronic devices in their own bins, etc. It’s been more than 20 years of this rigmarole; you’d think we’d all have it down by now. But inevitably, the line gets slowed down by the man who didn’t remember his cell phone was in his pocket or the woman who thought her 24 oz. bottle of shampoo would sneak past the X-ray. That’s why TSA employees, with understandable weariness, have to give the same instructions 100 times during their daily shift—because while we think we know what to do, we actually need to be reminded what’s expected of us.
In the days of Moses, God wanted to be sure his people remembered the laws he was giving them—so not only did he give them commands, he told them how important it was to repeat those commands amongst themselves. Teach them to your children, talk about them around the dinner table, give yourselves visible reminders on your body and in your home—these were all things the Lord advised his people to do.
For God’s people today, we continue to need such reminders. It’s easy to think after a while that you’ve absorbed everything already, that following God is second nature by now. But the truth is that, without daily discipleship, you’ll fall into bad habits and forget what Jesus has taught you. Don’t let your pride trick you into thinking that you have nothing more to learn from God, or that what you have learned is set in concrete. Read your Bible. Pray regularly. Worship and serve alongside fellow believers. These are all ways that God gives you little reminders of what the gospel’s all about.
And
rest assured, we all need reminders. Take it from this world traveler, life
goes a lot more smoothly when you listen—yes, even when you know the words by heart—to
the commands you swore you’d never forget.
