The Common Levels of Life
J. B. Brown, B. A. Deuteronomy 8:1-2 All the commandments which I command you this day shall you observe to do, that you may live, and multiply… The forty years' wanderings! What remains of them? A list of unknown names, no more. The dust of time has settled on the stations; and the events, big at the time with interests to millions, are without a note in history. What weary years of plodding marches through a dark, unheavenly country; what dreads and dangers, what wants and distresses, what keen agonies and fierce complaints, that oblivious silence covers! They are all there, days of fighting, nights of weeping, years of trudging. They seemed at the moment as if they were burning an indelible mark deep into life records; but they are already behind us, dim in the distance, a softening veil has fallen over the whole pilgrimage; a broad sense of pain conquered, shame endured, duty done; the consciousness that we have come out of the wanderings richer, braver, stronger, more earnest, but sadder, than when we entered the desert, is all that is left to us. In order that we may better understand the method of God in ordering our wilderness marches let us consider — I. THE REASON OF "THE WANDERINGS." Why is so large a portion of our years spent under the yoke of undistinguished duties, leaving no record but "the wanderings" behind? Briefly, because a few critical experiences do not make a character; a few impassioned, enthusiastic moments do not make a life. The inevitable falling off of the common hours and experiences seems to me to be the great teaching of this passage of Israel's history. It is a broad fact in the history of every life; in a measure, of every day's life, for the great cycles repeat themselves in little, as the organs of the body are present potentially in every part. But these narratives gather up the scattered incidents of our moral life into one grand incident, and show us with a large dramatic point and emphasis what we are daily doing under the eye of the great Leader, which makes these long, dry, unnoted wanderings inevitable; what it is which compels Him to impose what I have called the yoke of undistinguished duty, and to lead us up and down in the wilderness, that we may, if we will yield ourselves to His hand, work the sublime lessons, which we cannot learn and practise in a moment, into the common daily texture of life, that is, of eternity. II. THE PURPOSE OF THE WANDERINGS. Briefly, again, to work godly principles of action into the common texture of our daily lives. To make it a matter of perpetual, quiet choice and habit to square every action by the rule of the mind of God. III. THE "WANDERINGS," IN VIEW OF THEIR ETERNAL RESULTS. They, obscure and unprofitable as they may seem are the builders for eternity. The quiet, undistinguished years decide the matter for the moments when the election is finally and openly made. It takes years to give a form and bent to a character. Temperament we are born with, character we have to make; and that not in the grand moments, when the eyes of men or of angels are visibly upon us, but in the daily quiet paths of pilgrimage, when the work is being done within in secret, which will be revealed in the daylight of eternity. Habits, like paths, are the result of constant actions. It is the multitude of daily footsteps which go to and fro which shapes them. Let it light up your daily wanderings to know that there — in the quiet bracing of the soul to uncongenial duty, the patient bearing of unwelcome burdens, the loving acceptance of unlovely companionship — and not on the grand occasions, you are making your eternal future. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers. WEB: You shall observe to do all the commandment which I command you this day, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers.