See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. – Deuteronomy 30:15

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 16, 2015): Deuteronomy 30

There is an ancient proverb that we know of as “For the Want of a Nail.” The first appearance of the complete Proverb is thought to have been applied to the death of King Richard III at the hands of Henry Tudor (soon to be King Henry VII and the last English monarch to win the throne through battle) at the Battle of Bosworth Field ending the “War of the Roses” in 1485. But there is evidence that the proverb existed much earlier.

The full proverb simple reads like this:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The idea behind the proverb is that simple things in life often come with grave consequences; we are often just unable to see those consequences. So we need to take care of the small things – like a horseshoe nail. The idea has also been popularized by concepts like chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect, which postulates that the movement of a butterfly in one part of the world can result in a major storm in an another place.

Given the choice of prosperity or destruction, most of us would choose prosperity. But often what we fail to see is a connection between our daily lives and either the prosperity that we desire or the destruction that we feel we are reaping. Admittedly, it is often hard to see the connection between the nail and the loss of the kingdom. But successful people seem to be able to make the connection. Another proverb that we seem to like to live by is “don’t sweat the small stuff.” But that proverb only works for some small stuff. There are some small things that we definitely need to sweat if we want good things in our lives (saving up for retirement from the moment we begin to work might be one of these things), but the challenge is often telling the difference – and that can only be learned by being aware of the consequences of our actions.

Moses seems to be describing something very similar to the people of Israel. The decisions that they made as they entered the Promised Land were going to have a lasting effect. They needed to understand the consequences of their actions. The line between life and death, or prosperity and destruction was as thick as a nail, or as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. If they consistently chose God, good things would follow. But that was not going to be the natural choice. What comes naturally is the choosing of self. And if they chose self continually, then death and destruction would be their lot. The choice was theirs, but their future was not going to be discovered in the grandiose moments of the nation, but rather in the little things that they would choose on a daily basis.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 31