Deuteronomy 12

If any of you still play Pokemon, you know that as time has passed, the creatures have gotten more convoluted names and their appearances have grown weirder. In fact, some of them look disturbingly like rather inappropriate body parts. (I'm looking at you, Castform.) I grew up playing the original Red version, but anyone who's played any of the versions knows that as you travel further away from your home, the wild Pokemon get more resilient (and cooler) and the trainers you fight get tougher. Which is rather unrealistic, but I suppose it gives the game a more linear flow. As you approach the final bosses (the Elite Four), you're not going to find some pathetic Level 2 Pidgey. Similarly, if you're exploring outside your hometown, you're not going to run into a horde of wild Mewtwos.

If the foregoing makes absolutely no sense, don't worry--my point is just that certain locations have certain purposes. Perhaps a less nerdy example is zoning--sure, there are mixed-use properties, but you're still rarely going to find oil refineries directly abutting condominium complexes. (Disneyland is a bit of an exception; unlike Walt Disney World, which has square miles of greenery surrounding its parks, the California parks have houses, hotels, and restaurants across the street because Walt Disney was too slow to buy all that property up).

Likewise, God reminds His people through Moses that sacrificial offerings can't just be done in any old alley. These sacred offerings must be proffered in "the place the LORD will choose" (verse 26). Nowadays, we don't need to make sacrificial offerings at all, and we no longer are required to worship in a specific place. In fact, some folks have the opposite problem, only worshipping God at church yet living the rest of their lives as if they were secular. I often run into this problem myself, perhaps not acting as Christ-like as I could be. I have to remember to treat every location and every interaction with the reverence of an ancient Israelite offering a sacrifice to God.

Moses utters this chapter's nugget in verse 20: "When the LORD your God has enlarged your territory as he promised you, and you crave meat and say, 'I would like some meat,' then you may eat as much of it as you want." Out of context, this verse sounds like it's sanctioning gluttony (which it's not), but I do like the language Moses uses here. After all, what non-vegetarian out there hasn't, at some point in their life, stopped in the middle of whatever they were doing, looked up, and said to himself or herself, "I would like some meat"? Far from a modern quirk of behavior, this phrase has been a part of human nature since at least the time of Moses. I wish I could say that I would like some meat right now, but I just ate and thus would not particularly like some meat at the moment.