In the Old Testament the early encounters with God are based on the promise that the Lord who has revealed himself to His people will always be faithful to them. When God says to Moses, “I Am who I Am,” He is declaring that He is the one who will always be beside His people, leading and guiding them. It is this fidelity that sustains the people of Israel in their journey to the promised land. The people, of course, were not always faithful to God. Sometimes God seems to be willing to destroy them and needs to be persuaded otherwise by human representatives such as Moses and the prophets. At other times God declares that He will always be with His people, no matter how unfaithful their behavior. St. Paul wants us to take the events of the history of Israel as a warning as to what may happen to us Christians if we are not faithful to God and do not keep to God’s ways. Disasters, whether caused by nature or people, aren’t signs of God’s punishment. But when things go wrong, they are signs to us to reflect on our lives and ask ourselves whether we are producing the fruit that is asked of us.
One of the early Greek Fathers of the Church said that out three greatest temptations to sin are laziness, forgetfulness, and thoughtlessness. If thoughtlessness might be deemed the temptation of youth, forgetfulness is certainly the habit of old age, and perhaps laziness belongs to both.