Tuesday, September
26, 2017
Soon the people began to complain about their hardship, and
the Lord heard everything they said. Then the Lord’s anger blazed against
them, and he sent a fire to rage among them, and he destroyed some of the
people in the outskirts of the camp. Then
the people screamed to Moses for help, and when he prayed to the Lord, the
fire stopped. After that, the area was
known as Taberah (which means “the place of burning”), because fire from
the Lord had burned among them there.
Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to
crave the good things of Egypt. And the
people of Israel also began to complain. “Oh, for some meat!” they exclaimed. “We remember the fish we used to eat for free
in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers,
melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted.
But now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna!” Numbers 11:1-6(NLT)
The Lord
had some crabby kids in
the wilderness. God had sent Moses to
get them out of the hands of their Egyptian captors and lead them to
freedom. The trip, even for a huge group,
several million strong would have been only a few weeks. However, their crabby complaining stretched the
journey to forty years. I know what
Moses must have felt; I once drove straight through from Florida to New York with
three siblings under 12 in the back seat of my car! During that trip my crabby kids showed me the
real meaning of Bill and Gloria Gaither’s song:
He Touched Me.
Churlish
behavior is the consummate definition of ingratitude for what you have. Humankind has made that something of an art
form, never being satisfied for more than a nanosecond over what God gives. Impatience in the wilderness makes you
crabby!
In the
wilderness the people churned-up complaints against Moses for a lack of meat
and veggies. They wanted leeks, onions
and garlic; God provided them manna from Heaven. Where once they worried about eating at all,
as soon as God gave them a food source that completely met their need, they graduated
to demanding five-star dining. Thus it
has always been for us. Those of Adam’s
race are not thankful by nature.
·
Adam
and Eve weren’t thankful with a perfect garden environment and a perfect
relationship with God; they had to have the kind of knowledge God possessed.
·
Cain
was not satisfied with all the produce of the ground, he killed his brother because
his brother possessed favor with God, and he wanted that!
·
King
David wasn’t happy with all the riches and power God had given into his life;
he had to add another man’s wife to his collection.
John D.
Rockefeller was the world’s richest man in the last decade of the 19th
century. When asked once, "How much
money is enough money?" He replied, "Just a little bit more."[2] Abraham Lincoln was walking down the street
in Washington with his two boys in tow, both of them screaming their lungs
out. A passer-by asked him, what’s the matter, Mr. President? It is said Abe’s answer was: What’s
the matter? What’s the matter with the
whole world…I have two children and three walnuts!
Most of us
will never know the riches of a Rockefeller, or the power and prestige of a
King David or Abraham Lincoln. We will never
have a perfect environment like Adam and Eve.
And if those rich, powerful, and blessed people could be churlish and
ungrateful in all they were given, what makes us think a little more than we
now have will make us any happier?
If the task
of parenting were to alter course a wee bit in our culture, from teaching
children they can have/be anything they
want (which is the nauseating phrase I hear – and have also used),
to: you can be exactly what God wants you to be if you
listen and obey Him…it seems contentedness would be a lot more common in the
human family.
For You Today
As the
children of Israel learned in the wilderness, longing for the things of your
former captivity only makes you cry; onions have a way of doing that!
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
