Oftentimes I remind myself never to forget where I come from. When that happens there is every tendency to misbehave and lose one’s bearing. Now the Israelites have crossed the Jordan and settled in the Promised land. It was not their own doing. God then decides to remind them how the journey has been: “This is not the work of your sword or your bow. I gave you a land where you never toiled, you lived in towns you never built, and you eat now from vineyards and olive groves you never planted.” Maybe we too might look back and see the hand of God in the events of our lives, things that happened quite beyond our expectations or our own ability to bring them about.