"I am the LORD
your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no
other gods before me."
When God spoke these words to Moses and followed them with his Ten
Commandments to the people of Israel, he surely knew how soon they would forget. They
would forget that it was he who had delivered them out of Egypt and of the generations of
misery spent in slavery. Their troubles seemed to be far behind them, and when Moses left
them to go up into the mountain, how easy it was to forget him, too, and give in to human
temptations.
How easy it is for all of us to forget ... at times, who we are, where
we are, and who we should be serving. We are surrounded by the temptations of many
"false gods" - money, ambition, material goods, ego. There are many more
temptations and they all entice us to serve them. Even our Lord Jesus, when he wandered in
the wilderness, was enticed and tempted by the greatest false god of all. He, of course,
never lost faith in his Father, the one true God, and served and followed him even to the
cross. If only our faith could be as strong. Although we have never suffered the burden of
slavery, it is still the Lord our God and his Son, Jesus Christ, who have delivered each
one of us into our lives of grace and never-ending love. Let us never forget who it is
that we should serve - in every way that we can.
