“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”1
Haim Potok, a Jewish rabbi, scholar and writer, was born into an orthodox Jewish family in 1929. He grew up in New York City and started writing fiction when he was only sixteen years old.2
Repeatedly his Polish immigrant parents would keep telling him, “Haim, be a brain surgeon. You will make a lot of money and you will save a lot of people from dying.”
Time and again they would give him the same advice, “Haim, be a brain surgeon. You will make a lot of money and you will save a lot of people from dying.”
However, Heim wanted to be a writer and after repeated advice from both his mother and father telling him what he should do with his life, he shouted back at his mother, “I don’t want to stop people from dying. I want to teach them how to live.”3
Speaking personally I spent many years gaining an education that taught me many things—but never how to live. I had to learn that in the “College of Hardknocks!”
True, making a living is very important but learning how to live is much more important. And that’s what God’s Word, the Bible, is all about. As God said to Joshua some 4,000 years ago if you follow all of my laws, “Then you will be prosperous and successful.”
Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to get my priorities straight so that I will always live in harmony with your Word and become prosperous and successful as you define these qualities. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”
2. SparkNotes, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/chosen/context.html
3. From a sermon by Tod Bolsinger, San Clemente Presbyterian Church, San Clemente, California.
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