I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 1-2.

In today’s passage Moses begins a summary of what happened to the people of Israel from the time the left Mt Sinai until they arrived on the east side of the Jordan River.  None of what he said was news to those to whom he spoke.  They had heard this all before.  However, different ones of them would have heard different parts of this.  Some would have experienced some of it, but all were very young, or not yet born, when Israel left Mt Sinai.  Which brings us to an important lesson we can all learn.  It is important to reiterate the history of a group, especially the history which shapes what that group is today, regularly, because there will constantly be new members who never experienced many of those events.  We need to go over why we do things the way we do them time and again in order to not forget.  If we do not go over the stories that formed us as a group, new people will not understand why we do things the way that we do.  We must strive to give people to learn from the mistakes which we, or our predecessors, made so that they do not need to make those mistakes themselves.