[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR TUESDAY MARCH 1

[Donnie Parrett]

DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR TUESDAY MARCH 1

WORD OF WISDOM

I'm at an age where my mind still thinks I'm 29, my humor suggests I'm 12,
while my body mostly keeps asking if I'm sure I'm not dead yet.

___

DAILY DEVOTION

Following the Crowd

Once a spider built a beautiful web in an old house. He kept it clean and
shiny so that flies would patronize it. The minute he got a "customer" he
would clean up on him so the other flies would not get suspicious. Then one
day this fairly intelligent fly came buzzing by the clean spider web.
Old man spider called out, "Come in and sit."
But the fairly intelligent fly said, "No, sir. I don't see other flies in
your house, and I am not going in alone!"
But presently he saw on the floor below a large crowd of flies dancing
around on a piece of brown paper. He was delighted! He was not afraid if
lots of flies were doing it. So he came in for a landing.
Just before he landed, a bee zoomed by, saying, "Don't land there, stupid!
That's flypaper!"
But the fairly intelligent fly shouted back, "Don't be silly. Those flies
are dancing. There's a big crowd there. Everybody's doing it. That many
flies can't be wrong!"
Well, you know what happened. He was stuck on the spot and eventually died
right where he landed. Some of us want to be with the crowd so badly that we
end up in a mess.
What does it profit a fly (or a person) if he escapes the web only to end up
in the glue?

___

DAILY BIBLE READING

Deuteronomy 28-30 New King James Version
Blessings on Obedience
28 "Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord
your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you
today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the
earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you,
because you obey the voice of the Lord your God:

3 "Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the
country.

4 "Blessed shall be the [a]fruit of your body, the produce of your ground
and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the
offspring of your flocks.

5 "Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

6 "Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you
go out.

7 "The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated
before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before
you seven ways.

8 "The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all
to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord
your God is giving you.

9 "The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has
sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in
His ways. 10 Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by
the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the Lord will
grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of
your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the
Lord [b]swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The Lord will open to you His
good [c]treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season,
and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but
you shall not borrow. 13 And the Lord will make you the head and not the
tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you [d]heed the
commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are
careful to observe them. 14 So you shall not turn aside from any of the
words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after
other gods to serve them.

Curses on Disobedience
15 "But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your
God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I
command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake
you:

16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.

17 "Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

18 "Cursed shall be the [e]fruit of your body and the produce of your land,
the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.

19 "Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you
go out.

20 "The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you
set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly,
because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. 21
The Lord will make the [f]plague cling to you until He has consumed you from
the land which you are going to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with
consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with
the sword, with scorching,[g] and with mildew; they shall pursue you until
you perish. 23 And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze,
and the earth which is under you shall be iron. 24 The Lord will change the
rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on
you until you are destroyed.

25 "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go
out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall
become [h]troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your carcasses
shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and
no one shall frighten them away. 27 The Lord will strike you with the boils
of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you
cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and
confusion of heart. 29 And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes
in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed
and plundered continually, and no one shall save you.

30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her; you shall
build a house, but you shall not dwell in it; you shall plant a vineyard,
but shall not gather its grapes. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your
eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away
from before you, and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given
to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. 32 Your sons and
your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look
and fail with longing for them all day long; and there shall be [i]no
strength in your hand. 33 A nation whom you have not known shall eat the
fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you shall be only
oppressed and crushed continually. 34 So you shall be driven mad because of
the sight which your eyes see. 35 The Lord will strike you in the knees and
on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of
your foot to the top of your head.

36 "The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation
which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve
other gods-wood and stone. 37 And you shall become an[j] astonishment, a
proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you.

38 "You shall carry much seed out to the field but gather little in, for the
locust shall [k]consume it. 39 You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but
you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms
shall eat them. 40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory,
but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop
off. 41 You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for
they shall go into captivity. 42 Locusts shall [l]consume all your trees and
the produce of your land.

43 "The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and
you shall come down lower and lower. 44 He shall lend to you, but you shall
not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.

45 "Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake
you, until you are destroyed, because you [m]did not obey the voice of the
Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded
you. 46 And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your
descendants forever.

47 "Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of
heart, for the abundance of everything, 48 therefore you shall serve your
enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in
nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your
neck until He has destroyed you. 49 The Lord will bring a nation against you
from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation
whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of fierce countenance,
which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. 51 And they
shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until
you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the
increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have
destroyed you.

52 "They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified
walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they
shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord
your God has given you. 53 You shall eat the [n]fruit of your own body, the
flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you,
in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.
54 The [o]sensitive and very refined man among you will[p] be hostile toward
his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his
children whom he leaves behind, 55 so that he will not give any of them the
flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the
siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all
your gates. 56 The [q]tender and [r]delicate woman among you, who would not
venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her
delicateness and sensitivity, [s]will refuse to the husband of her bosom,
and to her son and her daughter, 57 her [t]placenta which comes out from
between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them
secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which
your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.

58 "If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are
written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE
LORD YOUR GOD, 59 then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants
extraordinary plagues-great and prolonged plagues-and serious and prolonged
sicknesses. 60 Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt,
of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. 61 Also every
sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law,
will the Lord bring upon you until you are destroyed. 62 You shall be left
few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because
you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. 63 And it shall be, that
just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the
Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you
shall be plucked[u] from off the land which you go to possess.

64 "Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the
earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you
nor your fathers have known-wood and stone. 65 And among those nations you
shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place;
but there the Lord will give you a [v]trembling heart, failing eyes, and
anguish of soul. 66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear
day and night, and have no assurance of life. 67 In the morning you shall
say, 'Oh, that it were evening!' And at evening you shall say, 'Oh, that it
were morning!' because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because
of the sight which your eyes see.

68 "And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I
said to you, 'You shall never see it again.' And there you shall be offered
for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy
you."

The Covenant Renewed in Moab
29 These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to
make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant
which He made with them in Horeb.

2 Now Moses called all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the
Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his
servants and to all his land- 3 the great trials which your eyes have seen,
the signs, and those great wonders. 4 Yet the Lord has not given you a heart
to [w]perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day. 5 And I
have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out
on you, and your sandals have not worn out on your feet. 6 You have not
eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or similar drink, that you may know
that I am the Lord your God. 7 And when you came to this place, Sihon king
of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out against us to battle, and we
conquered them. 8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the
Reubenites, to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manasseh. 9 Therefore
keep the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all
that you do.

10 "All of you stand today before the Lord your God: your leaders and your
tribes and your elders and your officers, all the men of Israel, 11 your
little ones and your wives-also the stranger who is in your camp, from the
one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water- 12 that you may
enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath, which the
Lord your God makes with you today, 13 that He may establish you today as a
people for Himself, and that He may be God to you, just as He has spoken to
you, and just as He has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14 "I make this covenant and this oath, not with you alone, 15 but with him
who stands here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with him
who is not here with us today 16 (for you know that we dwelt in the land of
Egypt and that we came through the nations which you passed by, 17 and you
saw their [x]abominations and their idols which were among them-wood and
stone and silver and gold); 18 so that there may not be among you man or
woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our
God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, and that there may not be
among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood; 19 and so it may not
happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in
his heart, saying, 'I shall have peace, even though I [y]follow the dictates
of my heart'-as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.

20 "The Lord would not spare him; for then the anger of the Lord and His
jealousy would burn against that man, and every curse that is written in
this book would settle on him, and the Lord would blot out his name from
under heaven. 21 And the Lord would separate him from all the tribes of
Israel for adversity, according to all the curses of the covenant that are
written in this Book of the Law, 22 so that the coming generation of your
children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land,
would say, when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which
the Lord has laid on it:

23 'The whole land is brimstone, salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does
it bear, nor does any grass grow there, like the overthrow of Sodom and
Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His
wrath.' 24 All nations would say, 'Why has the Lord done so to this land?
What does the heat of this great anger mean?' 25 Then people would say:
'Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers,
which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt; 26
for they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they did
not know and that He had not given to them. 27 Then the anger of the Lord
was aroused against this land, to bring on it every curse that is written in
this book. 28 And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath,
and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this
day.'

29 "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are
revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the
words of this law.

The Blessing of Returning to God
30 "Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the
blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you [z]call them to
mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you, 2 and you
return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, according to all that I
command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all
your soul, 3 that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and
have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the
Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If any of you are driven out to the
farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you,
and from there He will bring you. 5 Then the Lord your God will bring you to
the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will
prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. 6 And the Lord your God
will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

7 "Also the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on
those who hate you, who persecuted you. 8 And you will again obey the voice
of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today. 9 The
Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the
[aa]fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the
produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you for
good as He rejoiced over your fathers, 10 if you obey the voice of the Lord
your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in
this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul.

The Choice of Life or Death
11 "For this commandment which I command you today is [ab]not too mysterious
for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say,
'Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it
and do it?' 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go
over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' 14
But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may
do it.

15 "See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in
that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and
to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live
and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go
to possess. 17 But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are
drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, 18 I announce to you
today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the
land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. 19 I call heaven
and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life
and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and
your descendants may live; 20 that you may love the Lord your God, that you
may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and
the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord
swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."

Footnotes
Deuteronomy 28:4 offspring
Deuteronomy 28:11 promised
Deuteronomy 28:12 storehouse
Deuteronomy 28:13 listen to
Deuteronomy 28:18 offspring
Deuteronomy 28:21 pestilence
Deuteronomy 28:22 blight
Deuteronomy 28:25 a terror
Deuteronomy 28:32 nothing you can do
Deuteronomy 28:37 a thing of horror
Deuteronomy 28:38 devour
Deuteronomy 28:42 possess
Deuteronomy 28:45 did not listen to
Deuteronomy 28:53 offspring
Deuteronomy 28:54 Lit. tender
Deuteronomy 28:54 Lit. his eye shall be evil toward
Deuteronomy 28:56 sensitive
Deuteronomy 28:56 refined
Deuteronomy 28:56 Lit. her eye shall be evil toward
Deuteronomy 28:57 afterbirth
Deuteronomy 28:63 torn
Deuteronomy 28:65 anxious
Deuteronomy 29:4 understand or know
Deuteronomy 29:17 detestable things
Deuteronomy 29:19 walk in the stubbornness or imagination
Deuteronomy 30:1 Lit. cause them to return to your heart
Deuteronomy 30:9 offspring
Deuteronomy 30:11 not hidden from