Six weeks. Yep, that’s about right. The first two weeks of anything are the hardest but also exciting. The novelty is still there for about the first month and then reality sinks in at about week six.
That’s how long it took the Israelites to start grumbling at Moses and Aaron and wish they were back in Egypt. Six weeks and they are already seeing Egypt through rose coloured glasses and even think that it’s better to die eating meat as slaves than free and restricted. And the miraculous things that God did for them, parting the Red Sea and defeating the Egyptians, are lost in the thought that God has brought them out to the desert to starve.
This is one of the rolling our eyes at the ridiculous /stupid/faithless people in the Bible instances.
I’m learning more and more not to throw stones at people in the Bible because so often the stones ricochet off their reality and smack me in the forehead. Because I’m six weeks into a new journey, a new venture where I don’t know the outcome and sometimes my faith wavers. I look out of the corner of my eye at God and ask “Really?”
Because in foreign territory it’s so easy to forget who God is and what he’s done for us. The Israelites, and we, cry for God to act, to move, to change our circumstances, and in the midst of the change we ask “Really?”
Because God and the change and the plan are bigger than what we can imagine. And we want answers now. We want to know all the details and outcomes of the plan but it’s not for us. It’s not our timing, or doing, or even through our knowing that God’s purposes are accomplished.
And what does God do with the grumbling? He doesn’t do what I’d do, as attested to by my kids. He doesn’t rebuke them for their grumbling. He provides for them in the change and limbo. He provides meat at night and bread in the morning. And the provision will sustain them. And the provision will remind them.
“…In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him…” Exodus 16:6-7
I don’t think this is a case of rewarding bad behaviour. Because I see so many times in my life when I’ve grumbled out situations before God. I think part of what God does is remind us of his faithfulness when we forget to be faithful ourselves. That even though we don’t remember all he’s done for us, it doesn’t erase his continual hand in our lives.
So in his daily provision he reminds us of his universal provision. That he cares for us enough to guide and direct us. And teaches us that provision doesn’t always look like we imagine it should. Because we can’t see what God sees and know what he knows.
The best we can do in the midst of change and newness is strive to see his provision in the minute of the everyday. And allow those small mercies and blessings to point us toward his long term provision over our lives, as we’ve seen in the past, see in the present, and will see in the future.