He is Your Life

​“…that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days,…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20 

When we hear and use the term “cling”, when it relates to a relationship, it is most often not used in a positive way. People express annoyance with someone who is clingy and usually couple the term with other terms and phrases such as neediness or being needy.
​
In Deuteronomy, Moses, at the Lord’s command, addresses the Israelites’ disobedience in the land of Moab with a call for repentance. The Israelites thought and behaved in ways that were contrary to the Lord’s ways and commands, which meant they were choosing to distance themselves from the Lord and were acting of their own accord. Moses exhorted them to cling to the Lord, the very opposite of what they were now doing.

Moses used the term cling in a positive sense, and presented it as a requisite to life and the length of days. In doing this, Moses was conveying that clinging to the Lord was to keep close to the Lord as if their very life depended on it, because it did, for He is their life. We also must cling to the Lord because our very life depends on it. There is nothing apart from the Lord that offers life and length of days. Not clinging to the Lord is to think, behave, and live with perceived independence from the Lord, without acknowledging that our next breath is solely at His discretion and by His grace. To truly live and choose life is to acknowledge that He is our life and we must indefinitely cling to Him for life in every facet.