Deuteronomy 4:25-31
“When you have had children and children’s children, and become complacent in the land…” (Deuteronomy 4:25)

The Lord speaks to His people just on the wrong side of the Jordan – just as they’re about to cross onto the right side – and is compelled to issue a warning about complacency.

Complacency is interesting. It almost never happens with things we are actively working for or toward. One cannot be complacent and active at the same time. No, complacency comes about in two main ways: (1) when one gets settled enough in previous work that it becomes rote and (2) when one is dealing with a gift (which is far more common). The context for our reading today is clearly this latter option, as Israel is about to receive a land they did nothing to create or cultivate as a gift.

The vaccine to complacency is gratitude. This is especially true when applied to a gift (as all children are taught, “Go tell grandma thank you for the birthday card”). But even those things that we work toward should be encountered in a spirit of gratitude – in learning to be thankful for a brain to think, legs to work, arms to stretch, hands to heal, or whatever it is you’re doing. Being able to do work, even if it is at times troubling and frustrating, is still better than the alternative and so gratitude is the order of the day.

But let’s stay focused on gifts, because gifts abound all around us. Indeed, even the aforementioned brains, legs, arms, and hands are gifts from God – as is that last breath you took and the next one – and so we do well to cultivate a continued, on-going sense of gratitude in life because grateful people are literally incapable of becoming complacent. Grateful people get to experience – if even in just a small way – the joy of a gift over and over and over again.

Think back on one of the nicest gifts you ever received. Maybe it was an item, maybe an experience, maybe a little travel somewhere. Remember that moment when it was first revealed to you – the elation, surprise, smiles, joy. When we are grateful, all those good things are no longer frozen in the past, accessible only by memory. No, when we are grateful, they come alive again, in this moment. Amen.