Creighton Lacy - "Therefore, Choose Life" (January 14, 1962)
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| - | This day, all of you, before the Lord your God. | 0:04 |
| According to a popular Jewish legend, | 0:10 | |
| the rabbi of a little European town in the 18th century | 0:12 | |
| abruptly called the people together one day | 0:16 | |
| to hear an important announcement. | 0:18 | |
| They grumbled about stopping their work, | 0:21 | |
| about leaving their household chores, | 0:23 | |
| about interrupting their play, | 0:25 | |
| but when they finally assembled in the village square, | 0:28 | |
| this is what the beloved rabbi said. | 0:30 | |
| "I have asked you to close your shops and leave your homes | 0:34 | |
| to come here, | 0:38 | |
| because I have a news of great importance | 0:39 | |
| which cannot be delayed for even another hour. | 0:43 | |
| And this is my announcement. | 0:46 | |
| I wish to announce that there is a God in the world." | 0:49 | |
| This was long before Nietzsche | 0:56 | |
| and other cynics have proclaimed that God is dead, | 0:58 | |
| long before our age of scientism and positivism, | 1:02 | |
| when even student correspondence in the "Duke Chronicle" | 1:06 | |
| would contradict the rabbi. | 1:09 | |
| His was an age of faith | 1:11 | |
| when his hearers did not doubt the truth of what he said. | 1:13 | |
| Then why assert it in such dramatic and disruptive fashion? | 1:17 | |
| Simply because the people of his village | 1:22 | |
| were behaving as if had forgotten the fact. | 1:26 | |
| They talked about God, they went to the synagogue, | 1:29 | |
| they professed their belief and they said their prayers, | 1:33 | |
| but they acted as if God were dead, | 1:36 | |
| and according to this story, | 1:41 | |
| they understood the meaning | 1:42 | |
| and purpose of the rabbi's action | 1:44 | |
| without any sermonizing. | 1:46 | |
| Do we? | 1:49 | |
| Most of you, I expect, have gone fairly regularly to church | 1:52 | |
| and been active in the MYF for the BTU or their equivalent. | 1:55 | |
| You may be too old to say your prayers | 2:00 | |
| by childish repetition at your bedside, | 2:02 | |
| and too young to have learned the necessity | 2:06 | |
| of saying them in some other form, | 2:08 | |
| but you believe, most of you, that God exists. | 2:12 | |
| If you sometimes rebel against him | 2:16 | |
| or ridicule his outmoded ideas, | 2:18 | |
| you thereby acknowledge his reality. | 2:22 | |
| Like Gideon in the new play by Patty Chayefsky, | 2:25 | |
| you may wish God would disappear, | 2:29 | |
| or you may deny your love for him, | 2:31 | |
| but you do these things with the knowledge | 2:34 | |
| that he is standing there upstage, | 2:36 | |
| even though only you can see and hear him. | 2:39 | |
| In the scripture lesson read this morning | 2:45 | |
| from the 29th and 30th chapters of Deuteronomy, | 2:47 | |
| Moses was making an imperative announcement | 2:50 | |
| to the Israelites, | 2:53 | |
| the offer of a renewed covenant | 2:55 | |
| between the Lord God and his people. | 2:57 | |
| For 40 years, they had wandered in the wilderness, | 3:00 | |
| often grumbling, | 3:03 | |
| trusting more in a golden calf than in Yahweh. | 3:05 | |
| Now they were ready to enter the Promised Land. | 3:09 | |
| Moses, old and feeble, | 3:12 | |
| had been told that he was not to cross the Jordan, | 3:14 | |
| but must give up his Lee leadership to Joshua. | 3:17 | |
| This was his last exhortation | 3:20 | |
| before his final valedictory hymns. | 3:22 | |
| Just as our news media over the past week | 3:26 | |
| have been summarizing the year behind | 3:28 | |
| and appraising the year ahead, | 3:31 | |
| just as the President will soon deliver a report | 3:33 | |
| on the State of the Union | 3:36 | |
| and call for further crucial decisions in our nation, | 3:38 | |
| so Moses sought to remind the Hebrews of their heritage | 3:43 | |
| and of their responsibility. | 3:47 | |
| Let us look at a few verses from that covenant message. | 3:51 | |
| First comes a summons to gratitude and appreciation. | 3:56 | |
| Despite the signs and wonders, | 4:00 | |
| the victories and prosperity which they had seen, | 4:02 | |
| the Israelites had failed to realize | 4:04 | |
| what protection and blessing God had bestowed upon them. | 4:07 | |
| If we look back as a nation, | 4:13 | |
| as a university, | 4:16 | |
| as individuals, | 4:18 | |
| with any sense of thankfulness, of relief, of satisfaction | 4:20 | |
| of progress made or tragedy averted, | 4:24 | |
| we are all too ready to claim the achievement for ourselves, | 4:29 | |
| to discount the divine purpose at work. | 4:33 | |
| As Moses put it, | 4:36 | |
| the Lord has not given you a mind to understand | 4:38 | |
| or eyes see or ears to hear. | 4:41 | |
| As we should put it | 4:46 | |
| with our 20th-century theology and psychology, | 4:46 | |
| the Lord has given us a mind and eyes and ears, | 4:50 | |
| but we too seldom use them to gain insight into his will. | 4:54 | |
| Then Moses thunders, | 5:00 | |
| for no quavering, senile voice could proclaim these words, | 5:02 | |
| "You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God. | 5:08 | |
| The heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, | 5:15 | |
| all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, | 5:17 | |
| and the sojourner who is in your camp, | 5:21 | |
| both he you hews your wood and he who draws your water, | 5:24 | |
| that you may enter into the sworn covenant | 5:28 | |
| of the Lord your God." | 5:30 | |
| The challenge consists of two poles | 5:34 | |
| in constant dynamic tension. | 5:36 | |
| On one hand, the word of warning reminds us | 5:39 | |
| that every act, every thought lies open before God. | 5:43 | |
| No secret sin, no private pride | 5:49 | |
| escapes the judgment of the Lord. | 5:53 | |
| No regular church attendance cancels out the dishonesty, | 5:56 | |
| the vulgarity, the selfishness of our weekday conduct. | 6:00 | |
| On the other hand, God's promise shines forth | 6:06 | |
| as the supreme enticement for faithful living, | 6:09 | |
| that he may establish you this day as his people, | 6:13 | |
| and that he may be your God, as he has promised you. | 6:18 | |
| Furthermore, this is a cooperative adventure. | 6:23 | |
| No Jonah and no astronaut can travel | 6:27 | |
| beyond the reach of God's power and love. | 6:30 | |
| The membership is not restricted to the good guys | 6:34 | |
| with our education, or our color. | 6:36 | |
| It includes those who sweep our floors and deliver our mail, | 6:41 | |
| and even those who hand out the grades a few weeks hence. | 6:46 | |
| Still more startling, | 6:50 | |
| the covenant which God holds out to his people | 6:52 | |
| may be accepted by those godless Russians | 6:55 | |
| or by that hell-raising fraternity next door. | 6:58 | |
| Nor is it with you only that I make this sworn covenant, | 7:02 | |
| but with him who is not here with us this day, | 7:07 | |
| as well as with him who stands here | 7:11 | |
| with us this day before the Lord our God. | 7:13 | |
| Yet even though this is an inclusive fellowship, | 7:19 | |
| no single person gets lost in the mob. | 7:22 | |
| In one of the earliest accounts | 7:27 | |
| of individual responsibility, | 7:28 | |
| Moses warns, "Beware lest there be among you a man or woman | 7:30 | |
| or family or tribe, | 7:36 | |
| whose heart turns away this day from the Lord our God | 7:37 | |
| to go and serve the gods of those nations. | 7:41 | |
| Lest there be among you a root | 7:44 | |
| bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, | 7:46 | |
| one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, | 7:50 | |
| blesses himself in his heart, saying, | 7:53 | |
| "I shall be safe, | 7:56 | |
| though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart." | 7:57 | |
| How often do we glory in a nonconformity | 8:02 | |
| that rejects the faith as well as the practice of the herd? | 8:06 | |
| Or conversely and perversely, | 8:11 | |
| we seek safety from ourselves | 8:14 | |
| by becoming the organization man lost in a lonely crowd out. | 8:16 | |
| But Moses declares that the Lord will not pardon him, | 8:23 | |
| but will single him out from all the tribes of Israel | 8:26 | |
| for all the curses written in this book. | 8:29 | |
| By now both you and I are uneasily aware | 8:34 | |
| that these threats and promises | 8:37 | |
| which Moses conveys from the Lord | 8:39 | |
| are couched in exceedingly general terms. | 8:41 | |
| Oh, the consequences are clear enough. | 8:45 | |
| The whole land, brimstone and salt, and a burnt-out waste, | 8:47 | |
| unsown and growing nothing, | 8:52 | |
| where no grass can sprout, | 8:55 | |
| an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah. | 8:57 | |
| The Old Testament writers must have had superhuman insight | 9:02 | |
| into nuclear holocaust, | 9:05 | |
| for they certainly had experienced | 9:07 | |
| no such total devastation. | 9:09 | |
| Alternatively, for those who keep the commandments, | 9:13 | |
| God will make you abundantly prosperous | 9:17 | |
| in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, | 9:19 | |
| and in the fruit of your cattle, | 9:22 | |
| and in the fruit of your ground. | 9:24 | |
| And he will make you more prosperous | 9:26 | |
| and numerous than your fathers. | 9:27 | |
| But God's expectations from us, | 9:31 | |
| the requirements of obedience are not so explicit. | 9:35 | |
| Here again, Moses offers a word of significant insight. | 9:39 | |
| The secret things belong to the Lord our God, | 9:44 | |
| but the things that are revealed belong to us | 9:49 | |
| and to our children forever, | 9:52 | |
| that we may do all the words of this law. | 9:54 | |
| The secret things belong to the Lord. | 10:00 | |
| Life retains an area of mystery, | 10:05 | |
| where science and materialism | 10:07 | |
| and human reason cannot penetrate. | 10:09 | |
| If erudition assumes an ultimate omniscience for man, | 10:13 | |
| then and then only can it dispense with religion. | 10:18 | |
| For religion does not, as some would have us believe, | 10:22 | |
| represent the worship of man's ignorance | 10:25 | |
| or his fear of the unknown. | 10:28 | |
| Rather, it acknowledges a transcendent reality | 10:31 | |
| which creates the miracle of human thought, | 10:34 | |
| and at the same time, | 10:38 | |
| preserves eternal secrets. | 10:41 | |
| The Christian who claims to know | 10:45 | |
| the totality of God's nature and purpose and will | 10:46 | |
| is as presumptuous, | 10:51 | |
| nay, as blasphemous as the scientific materialist | 10:54 | |
| who denies any supra-rational truth. | 10:57 | |
| I avoid the term supernatural, | 11:02 | |
| because faith and hope and love and truth and beauty | 11:04 | |
| are as natural to the source of all being | 11:11 | |
| as any physical objects we can see and measure. | 11:13 | |
| Equally obvious and equally important, | 11:19 | |
| beside the realm of mystery, | 11:22 | |
| the secret things which belong to the Lord our God, | 11:24 | |
| lie the things that are revealed | 11:28 | |
| for us and our children forever. | 11:31 | |
| Although they are created and given by God, | 11:34 | |
| Moses says that they belong to us | 11:37 | |
| and those who come after us. | 11:40 | |
| There are people, pious religious people | 11:43 | |
| who fear to take possession of scientific revelations, | 11:46 | |
| who believe that man ought never | 11:49 | |
| to have unlocked the secret of the atom, | 11:51 | |
| or that medical discoveries | 11:54 | |
| are a violation of God's natural world. | 11:55 | |
| How tragic an error. | 12:00 | |
| Likewise, others sincerely believe | 12:03 | |
| that nothing has been revealed to man | 12:05 | |
| about the nature of God, | 12:07 | |
| or more commonly that the Lord reveals himself | 12:09 | |
| only in Jesus of Nazareth or the biblical record. | 12:12 | |
| The discovery of ancient manuscripts or Dead Sea Scrolls | 12:17 | |
| or more accurate translations are repudiated. | 12:21 | |
| The wisdom and experience of scholars and saints | 12:25 | |
| down through the centuries are rejected | 12:28 | |
| on the ground that it is not for man to tamper | 12:32 | |
| with the revelation of God. | 12:35 | |
| Moses knew better. | 12:38 | |
| He knew that the Lord works in manifold ways | 12:41 | |
| to communicate his majesty and his love to man. | 12:44 | |
| I believe that he would assure us today | 12:49 | |
| that the miracles of the laboratory and of outer space, | 12:50 | |
| the profound insights civil electronics and psychology | 12:55 | |
| have been given to us and to our children | 12:59 | |
| by an almighty God, | 13:03 | |
| but there is a final clause to the paragraph, | 13:06 | |
| a condition and a purpose of God's revelation, | 13:11 | |
| that we may do all the words of this law. | 13:15 | |
| The goal of learning is not learning itself, | 13:21 | |
| nor is it omnipotent power. | 13:23 | |
| Much has been revealed to us | 13:26 | |
| and much more will be revealed in the years ahead | 13:28 | |
| in order that we may effectively fulfill our covenant, | 13:32 | |
| in order that we may serve our fellow man, | 13:37 | |
| in order that we may recognize | 13:41 | |
| and choose the more abundant life. | 13:44 | |
| In Moses' own words, | 13:48 | |
| the things that are revealed to us | 13:49 | |
| are not for the purpose of knowing, | 13:52 | |
| and this applies as crucially to theological insight | 13:54 | |
| as to scientific discovery, | 13:57 | |
| but that we may do. | 13:59 | |
| Here we have betrayed the covenant most frequently | 14:03 | |
| and most flagrantly. | 14:08 | |
| As Protestants, as Democrats, as moderns, | 14:12 | |
| we often rebel against external authority, | 14:15 | |
| but then, because responsibility seems too heavy | 14:19 | |
| for us to bear alone, | 14:22 | |
| we shift its weight to heredity or environment, | 14:23 | |
| to our genes or our emotional traumas. | 14:27 | |
| Occasionally, in pious desperation, | 14:30 | |
| we cast our burdens on the Lord, | 14:33 | |
| not in any attitude of loving trust, | 14:35 | |
| but in the belief that he is far away and unconcerned, | 14:38 | |
| or ought to shoulder the blame for the mess we are in. | 14:41 | |
| "Ah, no," says wise old Moses. | 14:46 | |
| "This commandment which I command you this day | 14:49 | |
| is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. | 14:52 | |
| It is not in heaven that you should say, | 14:57 | |
| "Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, | 15:00 | |
| that we may hear it and do it?" | 15:02 | |
| Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, | 15:05 | |
| "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, | 15:08 | |
| that we may hear it and do it?" | 15:11 | |
| But the word is very near you. | 15:14 | |
| It is in your mouth and in your heart, | 15:17 | |
| so that you can do it." | 15:22 | |
| You can do it. | 15:26 | |
| No scientific determinism, | 15:28 | |
| no philosophical fatalism, | 15:32 | |
| no theological predestinarianism | 15:34 | |
| can abolish the human experience of freedom | 15:37 | |
| or the moral responsibility that stems from it. | 15:41 | |
| Family and teachers, the Bible and the church, | 15:47 | |
| friends and foes may help to cultivate | 15:51 | |
| that inner conscience, | 15:54 | |
| but the Word of God is planted in each receptive heart. | 15:56 | |
| It is not written in any secret code to mislead us, | 16:01 | |
| and God does not ask of anyone the impossible. | 16:05 | |
| He asks only that we acknowledge his Lordship | 16:10 | |
| over every aspect of our lives. | 16:13 | |
| To be sure, that his a radical choice. | 16:17 | |
| See, I have set before you this day life and good, | 16:20 | |
| death and evil. | 16:25 | |
| We need not take the alternatives | 16:29 | |
| too literally or materially. | 16:31 | |
| In the centuries after Moses, | 16:33 | |
| the Jews learned that God's chosen people | 16:35 | |
| were often chosen for suffering and sacrifice, | 16:38 | |
| rather than for victory and prosperity. | 16:42 | |
| On the other hand, we dare not dismiss | 16:46 | |
| the symbols of life and death too lightly, | 16:48 | |
| for the death which comes to a people who forsake the Lord | 16:52 | |
| to follow false gods | 16:55 | |
| may be quite literal and quite real. | 16:57 | |
| A nation which dies morally, culturally, spiritually | 17:01 | |
| will have little power or little concern | 17:07 | |
| to resist physical or military death. | 17:10 | |
| This choice is a solemn covenant, | 17:15 | |
| so solemn that Moses | 17:18 | |
| calls on heaven and earth to witness it. | 17:19 | |
| It represents a voluntary pledge of allegiance. | 17:23 | |
| God does not coerce, | 17:27 | |
| but he does warn an inevitable consequence, | 17:30 | |
| that if you are drawn away to worship other gods | 17:33 | |
| and serve them, | 17:36 | |
| you shall perish. | 17:37 | |
| The idols of nationalism and racial prejudice, | 17:40 | |
| of campus popularity and moral relativity | 17:43 | |
| are so transient, | 17:48 | |
| so transparent | 17:50 | |
| that intelligent beings ought not to be readily deceived. | 17:51 | |
| An ancient Hebrew legend records that, | 17:56 | |
| back in Ur of the Chaldees, | 17:58 | |
| young Abram's father found one of the household idols | 18:00 | |
| smashed to pieces, | 18:04 | |
| with a telltale sledgehammer lying nearby. | 18:06 | |
| He called his son to account, | 18:10 | |
| and the boy soberly explained that the big God | 18:12 | |
| had gotten angry at the little god, and beaten him to death. | 18:15 | |
| "Ridiculous," his father retorted. | 18:19 | |
| Didn't Abram know that a plaster figure had no emotions, | 18:21 | |
| no strength, | 18:25 | |
| no life with which to slay his neighbor? | 18:26 | |
| "Then why," asked little Abram, "should we worship him?" | 18:30 | |
| Must we wait until our mortal gods of fame and fortune, | 18:36 | |
| our worship of sex and success collapse into rubble | 18:41 | |
| before we recognize their hollow fraud? | 18:46 | |
| Therefore, choose life, pleads Moses, | 18:50 | |
| knowing full well, as he remarks soon afterward, | 18:54 | |
| that many will turn aside from the way of the Lord, | 18:56 | |
| act corruptly, and do what is evil. | 18:59 | |
| Therefore choose life. | 19:04 | |
| Choose for this new year | 19:08 | |
| the values, the standards, | 19:09 | |
| the associations, the occupations | 19:13 | |
| which God offers, | 19:17 | |
| for that means life and length of days, | 19:19 | |
| or better yet, richness of days and fullness of life. | 19:24 | |
| Moses had spent 40 years | 19:29 | |
| and scores of pages in the Old Testament | 19:31 | |
| laying down an elaborate code of behavior. | 19:33 | |
| Today, we ignore his dietary laws | 19:37 | |
| and scoff at long lists of abominations. | 19:39 | |
| We even subject the 10 Commandments | 19:43 | |
| to critical scrutiny and sometimes reinterpretation. | 19:45 | |
| But here at the end of his days, | 19:50 | |
| Moses offered a simpler criterion | 19:52 | |
| for followers of divine commandments, | 19:54 | |
| loving the Lord your God, | 19:58 | |
| obeying his voice, | 20:00 | |
| and cleaving to him. | 20:03 | |
| Obedience here means more than submission to a set of rules, | 20:06 | |
| a strict adherence to stern commands, | 20:10 | |
| for as we have already seen, | 20:13 | |
| the voice of God is not far off, | 20:15 | |
| not in heaven or beyond the sea. | 20:17 | |
| It is in your heart and mine. | 20:21 | |
| Responsibility and freedom are seldom easy, | 20:25 | |
| not even for those who misunderstand them as license. | 20:29 | |
| But we have the assurance | 20:33 | |
| that the obligation is not too hard, | 20:34 | |
| that it has been given to us, | 20:38 | |
| that it is very near, | 20:40 | |
| that we can do it, if we will. | 20:44 | |
| In one African tribe, | 20:49 | |
| the same word doubles for to hear and to obey. | 20:50 | |
| Parents and teachers know full well that in our language, | 20:55 | |
| there exists the wide chasm between hearing and obedience, | 20:59 | |
| between knowing the right and doing it. | 21:03 | |
| That gulf exists in our theological vocabulary | 21:07 | |
| and in our ethical response. | 21:11 | |
| At the beginning of this sermon, | 21:15 | |
| I made reference to the new Broadway hit "Gideon," | 21:16 | |
| which can be found in a rather unlikely place, | 21:20 | |
| the December issue of "Esquire" magazine. | 21:23 | |
| As a drama, it can great beauty and great force. | 21:27 | |
| As an insight into human nature, | 21:32 | |
| it represents significant truth, | 21:34 | |
| but if an amateur critic may venture an opinion, | 21:37 | |
| it goes astray in its fundamental presupposition | 21:40 | |
| about the nature of God. | 21:44 | |
| Patty Chayefsky implies that for God to be God, | 21:47 | |
| to display his authority and his power, | 21:51 | |
| it is necessary to nullify man, | 21:55 | |
| to deny any meaning or value or freedom | 21:58 | |
| for human personality. | 22:02 | |
| The playwright is correct, of course, | 22:05 | |
| in realizing that no self-respecting man | 22:07 | |
| can love that kind of God, | 22:10 | |
| no matter how sincerely he may try, | 22:12 | |
| Against such a jealous tyrant, | 22:16 | |
| the mere affirmation of selfhood, of personal integrity | 22:18 | |
| becomes inevitably perverted into pride, ambition, | 22:22 | |
| the attempt of man to become God. | 22:27 | |
| But that is not the Christian experience. | 22:31 | |
| Some of you, | 22:36 | |
| intellectually alert or religiously Orthodox, or both, | 22:36 | |
| will have noticed by now that the name of Jesus Christ | 22:41 | |
| has not been mentioned. | 22:44 | |
| Of course not. | 22:46 | |
| Moses had not heard of it. | 22:47 | |
| Neither had Gideon. | 22:49 | |
| But Moses revealed the deeper insight, | 22:51 | |
| for Gideon knew only a domineering God, | 22:54 | |
| demanding love from his servants, | 22:57 | |
| but granting them no freedom. | 22:59 | |
| The God of Moses was also a jealous God, | 23:02 | |
| a ruler who expected to be obeyed, | 23:05 | |
| who rewarded and punished according to his laws, | 23:08 | |
| but in offering his people a covenant, | 23:12 | |
| he conceded their freedom | 23:16 | |
| and their right to accept or reject. | 23:17 | |
| Choose life and good and blessing | 23:21 | |
| by loving the Lord your God, | 23:26 | |
| obeying his voice, | 23:28 | |
| and cleaving to him. | 23:31 | |
| To the logical Old Testament mind, | 23:34 | |
| Moses' God may sound more enigmatic, | 23:36 | |
| more inconsistent than Gideon's. | 23:38 | |
| After several frustrating attempts, | 23:41 | |
| Gideon confesses his inability | 23:42 | |
| to love a God who overrode all human emotion and initiative. | 23:45 | |
| Moses, on the other hand, clung blindly but loyally | 23:50 | |
| to his insistence on a God who could be loved, | 23:53 | |
| who could be embraced, | 23:57 | |
| who could be obeyed out of faith instead of fear, | 24:00 | |
| the kind of a God, in other words, revealed in Jesus Christ. | 24:05 | |
| The end of a story, | 24:11 | |
| which neither Moses nor Gideon could see, | 24:12 | |
| the beginning of the story for every genuine Christian | 24:16 | |
| is the conviction that somehow, in inexplicable fashion, | 24:19 | |
| God came into human life life to prove his concern for it. | 24:24 | |
| He did not come like Gideon's angel, swathed in black, | 24:30 | |
| invisible to other mortals, | 24:34 | |
| fading away whenever he grew displeased. | 24:36 | |
| He did not come to pulverize human personality, | 24:40 | |
| to annihilate man's freedom, | 24:44 | |
| to force love under penalty of death. | 24:47 | |
| Rather, the God of Jesus Christ revealed himself | 24:52 | |
| to bring more abundant life, | 24:55 | |
| to offer the gift of grace and forgiveness, | 24:58 | |
| to bestow unmerited love. | 25:02 | |
| The covenant he makes with man | 25:07 | |
| presupposes a measure of creativity | 25:09 | |
| for the creature as well as the creator, | 25:12 | |
| a response of faith to the act of salvation. | 25:15 | |
| You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God, | 25:21 | |
| as you do at each new year, | 25:28 | |
| or each new day, | 25:32 | |
| as you do in the sacrament of holy communion, | 25:35 | |
| as you do on the threshold of every moral choice. | 25:39 | |
| Therefore, choose life, | 25:44 | |
| turning to the Lord your God | 25:47 | |
| with all your heart and with all your soul, | 25:49 | |
| trusting in the assurance which Moses reiterates. | 25:52 | |
| Be strong and of good courage, | 25:56 | |
| for it is the Lord who goes before you. | 25:59 | |
| He will be with you. | 26:02 | |
| He will not fail you nor forsake you. | 26:05 | |
| Amen. | 26:10 | |
| The Lord bless you and keep you. | 26:20 | |
| The Lord make his face to shine upon you | 26:24 | |
| and be gracious unto you. | 26:26 | |
| The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, | 26:29 | |
| and give you peace | 26:33 | |
| this day and forever more. | 26:35 |
