Color commentary

I love the movie The Wizard of Oz … 1939 … classic movie.  When I was a little guy I had a set of vinyl albums that played the entire movie verbatim.  It got the point that I remembered the first probably 20 – 30 minutes of the entire movie, dialog, sounds, etc.  Everything word for word.  But I think I loved most about that movie was how it was in black and white (some of you younger folks might not know what this means … ask your parents) until Dorothy emerges from the house in Munchkin Land and the scene immediately changes to the most outrageously vivid color you can imagine.  Incredible stuff!  You almost feel like you can see things when the color kicks in that you couldn’t see before the color came about.  Details that couldn’t be noticed in the black and white … context one couldn’t see, like the color of the ruby slippers, etc.  Yeah, I loved the movie and still do!

As I perused my reading this week through Deuteronomy 7 – 13, Psalms 10 – 16, and 1 Chronicles 9 – 15, I came across a familiar passage that struck me in a less familiar way than it had previously.  It comes in Deuteronomy during the sermon that Moses is giving to the Israelites to send them off into the promised land … without him.   In this passage he gives some pretty key reminders to them, including verses 9 – 12 and 16 – 17.

If you obey, you will enjoy a long life in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors and to you, their descendants—a land flowing with milk and honey!   For the land you are about to enter and take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you planted your seed and made irrigation ditches with your foot as in a vegetable garden.   Rather, the land you will soon take over is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain— a land that the Lord your God cares for. He watches over it through each season of the year!

“But be careful. Don’t let your heart be deceived so that you turn away from the Lord and serve and worship other gods.   If you do, the Lord’s anger will burn against you. He will shut up the sky and hold back the rain, and the ground will fail to produce its harvests. Then you will quickly die in that good land the Lord is giving you.

Moses is sharing a crucial message with the children of Israel about the blessing of obedience and the consequences of failing that obedience.  I think there are definitely applications of these concepts to us, but is Moses trying to tell the Israelites (and us) that if we are obedient, things will always work out great for us, and that if we aren’t obedient, God is going to punish us and deprive us from the blessings we’d otherwise receive?  I don’t think so, but I do think there are principles being outlined here that we need to grab on to and apply to our lives.

One unfortunate and inescapable reality of life is that bad stuff happens, even to the most devout and obedient followers of Christ.  People get cancer.  They get in car accidents.  They lose homes to financial distress.  The get other types of illnesses.  It’s terrible, but it’s true.

In a similar way, the disobedient and wayward survive their defiance, flourish with good health, enjoy wealth and riches, live long lives, etc.  So, what’s the story?  Is Moses wrong in what he was outlining to the Israelites?  Was his admonition only for the specific time and in that specific circumstance?

Yes and no.  I believe he was spot-on in that it was factually-speaking God’s covenant with the Israelites at that time.  But I think it also has applicability for us.  I just think the meaning isn’t quite what we’d take away on face value.  How so?  Sort of like watching The Wizard of Oz.

When we obey God, live in a way that He desires, that brings Him honor and glory, our lives take on a level of visual clarity that is missing entirely when we live in disobedience to Him.  If the sometimes inevitable bad stuff does come to pass, God allows us the ability to live through it in His frame of reference.  Certainly, we don’t see how our plights interweave with that of everyone else in the world (the way God does), but I think he gives us vision to see that there is something greater at work.  That there’s a possibility of blessing through the difficulty.  It’s like when we get to see Munchkin Land and Oz in crazy amazing Technicolor on the big screen back in 1939 (or even in 19XX – haha – when I was a kid).  We might be able to notice details we wouldn’t have been able to see in black and white (without God’s intervention and interaction and frame of reference).  We can see with greater depth perception than without the color … allowing us context that we otherwise rob ourselves of if we neglect to align our obedience to His desires.

I realize that Moses’s references aren’t to color versus black and white, but notice how descriptive he is regarding the land the Israelites are about to inherit and notice what a vivid portrait he paints.  The word picture of “a land flowing with milk and honey” brings forth images that allow us to see what must have been the lifelong dream of many of God’s promised people.  And, while the other references are not quite as visual, they are no less effective at portraying a texture of the promise that lends reality to something not quite realized.

The same is true with how God leads us through tumultuous times.  He allows us to see a reality beyond what we can touch and feel because we haven’t reached it yet.

Importantly, the opposite is true as well.  When we choose our own way (as Moses says, when we “turn away from the Lord and serve and worship other gods”) … by definition, the opposite of God’s plan for us … we rob ourselves of the ability to see in tangible, vibrant ways how God is positioning our existence to bless us and to bring us to His intended end.

The choice is, of course, ours.  It is clear from the passages above from Deuteronomy 11.  We can choose to obey, or we can turn away from the Lord and “worship other gods.”  We can choose color, or black and white.  Clarity, or obscurity.  Depth, or shallowness.  Context, or hopelessness.

Let’s go before God this week and prayerfully ask him to show us any areas where we are choosing black and white.  Ask Him to make you (us) open to any change or correction He shows us, so that we can align our desires and behaviors in obedience to what He wants … so we can enjoy the full-blown Technicolor life He wants to show us.

Obeying Jesus,

MR