Daily Lesson for May 23, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 11 through 17:

11 Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous* snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ 

The idea of a self-made man is a myth.  We all stand on others people's shoulders.  I have what I have because somebody else helped me get it. I am where I am because somebody else guided me.  And I am who I am because somebody else shaped me. First and foremost, that somebody was God.

There's a proverb:

The race is not to the swift,

Nor the battle to the strong,

Not riches to men of understanding,

But time and chance happen to them all.

It's by grace that we've been brought this far; so we should be humble. 

It's by help that we didn't die in the wilderness; so we should be thankful.

And it could have all gone another way; so we should be generous.