Deuteronomy 10:14-18: Look Around
Monday, December 4, 2023
Look around you: Everything you see is God’s – the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children – that’s you! – out of all the other peoples. That’s where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he’s the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn’t play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing. (MSG)
The Book of Deuteronomy served the Hebrew people in knowing the love of the Living God. As Book of the Torah, it contained the Law that Jesus lived by as Jewish man; and it also was the springboard for the initiation of Jesus’ Law of Love. Today these verses still serve as guideposts to those who listen with open ears, minds and hearts. The expansive view taken by many in the mid-20th Century disquiets some and brings joy to others. Today we have the opportunity to look around, and to see how willing we are to love others as God does.
We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8). No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned. The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, (Romans 12:18) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:45)
When we compare varying versions of these ancient verses, we begin to understand creation in a new way.
Paragraph 5 of the encyclical Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, proclaimed by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965) For the full document, visit: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
Earth image from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_SJ08UNag
Romans 12:18 image from: https://reversingverses.com/2015/04/08/romans-1218/
The Noontimes 