Yesterday we considered that the trouble started when the people who God had rescued from slavery failed to remember their long standing relationship with this God. First it was the protection for the plague that killed all the first born males of the Egyptians, then it was the rescue from slavery thing. They had received a leader who was willing to stand up to the powers of the day and take on the responsibility of leading this huge and motley crew of folk who had lost much of the skill of self-governance in their years of slavery. Of course this miraculous change of fortune, from slavery to freedom, left them in totally unfamiliar territory - both literally and metaphorically. People of slavery wait, with occasional whining. There is no empowerment. There is no development of skills. No one wants thinking, growing, empowered slaves.
Now they are in a land they don't know, not knowing who is responsible for providing for them, and no one to blame when what is needed doesn't appear. It took them a while to figure this out. First they partied (and that didn't turn out well) and then they tromped forward, step by step, day by day towards the promised land of milk and honey. It would be a paradise. It would be heaven. It would be just around the next corner.
Except it wasn't: not paradise, not heaven, and not around the next corner. The folks they didn't like back in Egypt were equally annoying in the wilderness. The demands of being Pharaoh's slaves were replaced with the demands of making one's way in unknown territory with only limited survival skills. I wonder how many days it took before the fear set in.
What if they had bought a pig in a poke? What if they had exchanged a difficult, no future life in Egypt for a deadly, no future and short life in the wilderness? Could someone please reassure them? Could someone at least provide some comfort food to ease the hard days?
These people had a lot to learn and I sympathize with their anxiety and in time, their exhaustion at having to cope one more day. I completely understand that the noise of their worry drowned out the music of God's miraculous provision of manna and water. My grandmother had a saying, "Your troubles are bad, but my trouble are my troubles." At some point, the people of Israel were willing to trade the promise of their own land for an end to the troubles that weighed them down. I get it. Respite. Release. Comfort. Assurance.
Of course, those can only come from the one whose vision includes all the universe. Any respite that comes from this world will last but a moment. Eternal respite comes from the Eternal One. Any release that we experience today will be taken away tomorrow, unless it is a gift from the one who sees all todays and all tomorrows. The only comfort that will last is the comfort of the Creator.
So the key is to get to know the Eternal, Creating, Providing One - the one we call God. But that is so difficult, and in the end, a very long process with many starts and stops and failures and mis-communications. The wilderness through which the people of Israel wander is much like the wilderness of believing in this God. Long, difficult, unclear, unpredictable.....and on some days we forget all the blessings of the past and whining is the best we can do.
I mention all this just so none of us point a self-righteous finger at these ancient people....because, my friends, they are us, and we are them and tomorrow we will have to fight our desire to whine yet again.
Tune in tomorrow, 'cuz the wandering continues.
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