Is there an Employee Handbook for paradise?

This week's study is on Deuteronomy 11:8-15:

Now pay attention to all the commandments I am giving you today, so that you may be strong enough to enter and possess the land where you are headed, and that you may enjoy long life in the land the Lord promised to give to your ancestors and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land where you are headed is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand like a vegetable garden. Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains, a land the Lord your God looks after. He is constantly attentive to it from the beginning to the end of the year. Now, if you pay close attention to my commandments that I am giving you today and love the Lord your God and serve him with all your mind and being, then he promises, “I will send rain for your land in its season, the autumn and the spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and olive oil. I will provide pasture for your livestock and you will eat your fill.”

God is talking to his people here about the promised land and the paradigm shift they will need to experience in order to thrive there.

The vegetable garden is a metaphor for routine. One plants, weeds, and irrigates in a predictable pattern. It is the slavery of the mundane. Our days and seasons revolve around routine like a dog leashed to a stake in the yard. We lazily plod along, never surprised, never in danger, never in need of help. The scenery never changes.

The promised land, on the other hand, requires us to be strong. It is a call to adventure. It is not a flat field with neat mud-lined ditches full of river water. It has hills and valleys. We can't live the same life in this new land. We are no longer slaves, but participants, players in a game. We have to pay attention to the rules. We have to be ready for the unexpected. There are lions.

In this new land, we don't have the convenience of irrigation channels and the constant comfort of reservoirs of water laid aside at our disposal. Everything we do depends on the rain from heaven, sent by God according to his design and his whim. We are not in total control. If God doesn't come through, there is no rain, no crops, and eventually no us.

But God's unblinking eyes are on this land continually. He cares for it and watches over it. As long as we're playing on his team, he sends the rain. The land of his promise is full of the luxurious blessings of milk and honey.

When God gives his promise to his people, he also gives his commandments so that they can be strong enough to take possession of it. Did we really think it would just fall into our laps like a slave's wages? He promises long (eternally long?) life to those of us that obey and take hold of it.

If you look at how we live out our faith in the modern church, it looks like Christian wage slavery. We go to "work" on Sunday. Pay "taxes" into the hat. We put on nice clothes. We have meetings.

We try to make our lives easier, more predictable and safe, more comfortable. We want a simple routine with no mandatory overtime and then we want to retire when it's over. But is that what Jesus died for? So that we could take the guesswork out and not have to break a sweat?

Instead of that, let's aim for the land of God's promise. A safe routine is nice, but wouldn't you rather be in a place where God is constantly paying attention?

Where are you right now? The flat easy plantations of ritual and daily routine? Or the dangerous paradise God has called us to? Where are you headed, and who is leading the way?

Think of what life might look like there, and of what might be required of you for you to get there.