9 February | EVERYONE
“If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely." Leviticus 26: 3-5
Every afternoon Jacob, an old farmer and shepherd who lives in the countryside, passes through the village. He parades through the streets wearing a brown wool poncho and a straw hat. He is a widower, has three children, and everyone in the neighborhood concludes that the blessings God pours out on him, and his family are almost supernatural. How can they explain, for example, the mystery of raining on their land and not on their next-door neighbor's?
When someone asks him the reason for so many blessings, he replies, "I only take the Word of God seriously," and reads to his friends part of today's text: "If you walk in my precepts and keep my commandments..."
In the Bible, what we call "blessings" are largely the fruit of keeping the laws established by the Creator. It is not only a question of the ten eternal principles of His holy law but also of the various laws of nature. They rule the world. You do not need to be religious or spiritual to understand that disrespect for the laws of nature brings with it the destruction of the planet on which we live. Nature cannot be subjected to the whims of human beings. Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, wrote: “How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind does not listen.”
Do you want your threshing to last until the harvest and the harvest to last until the sowing? Do you want to eat your bread to your fill and dwell safely in your land? Respect the laws of nature, walk in the divine precepts, and keep His commandments. Put them into practice and you will be fine.
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It is not about obeying God's laws to save you or to make God love you more. He loves you unconditionally. That is why He expects you to follow His wise counsel for the good of yourself and your fellow men. This includes the laws about the protection of nature.