blessings and curses

If given a choice between blessings and curses, I doubt anyone would choose to be cursed. Yet, if God is still the same today as he was in the time of Moses, a lot of us choose the curses. Because Leviticus 26 makes it clear that all those choices that amount to disobedience will bring me bad things.

The chapter starts this way, in the first 13 verses: "If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit . . . . I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid . . . . I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you.”

That all sounds pretty good. Sign me up for the favorable work conditions and prosperous results. Sign me up for the peace and fruitfulness.

But then things take a turn, in verse 14 and following: “'But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands . . .  then I will do this to you:I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.

Wow, um, no thanks! I don’t need any terror or wasting diseases, or fruitless work, or to lose to my rivals. Life is fine without all that.

But then I go through my day shading the truth when it helps me, laughing at the coarse talk, railing against stupid people, sometimes causing discord. So much of my day can pass without a thought given to God.

So what am I choosing really? Just because God, in his grace, gives me a little time and space, just because he doesn’t send all that badness on the first day, doesn’t mean his judgment will wait forever. Am I lulled by his forbearance?

Choose this day whom you will serve, a later apostle would say. Who am I really choosing?