Finding Shelter. Russell J. Levenson Jr.
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That He is merciful and just,
here is my comfort and my trust;
His help I wait with patience.7
Amen.
—Martin Luther, d. 1546
6 God has yet to rename Abram in this passage; this occurs in Genesis 17.
7 Martin Luther (d. 1546), translated by Catherine Winkworth (d. 1878). From The Hymnal 1982 (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1985), #151.
The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
—Exodus 16:11–12
I confess that I have been a grumbler from time to time. My grumbling is caused by lots of things—perhaps I did not get my way or got stuck in traffic. Sometimes it is when I am hungry, and if I am hungry and at a restaurant and I get an inattentive waiter—well, I grumble. I know people, and have prayed with a lot of them, who have much better reasons to grumble—they have cancer, or their marriage or a friendship is in serious trouble, maybe a child has run off the rails or a job is in jeopardy. There are reasons to grumble. Some of them rather innocuous, but some downright appropriate.
For instance, in our lesson from Exodus we hear that “God hears” the grumbling of the Israelites and sets out to do something about it. Some would say they had every right to grumble—at this part of the story, these descendants of Adam and Eve, the Hebrews, were rescued by a spirit-empowered Moses from years of toil and the burden of unceasing labor from dawn to dusk. They are on their way to a new land—that land flowing with milk and honey. Here we find them on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed Egypt—roughly forty-five days in and the grumbling starts.
Why? Well they are in the desert—food is short. Have you ever been around kids late in the day between lunch and snack time? It was probably something like that, except it is thousands of kids at the same time. The grumbling gets so bad some begin to say it would have been better to have died under whips, eating the food fit for slaves, than to continue on this journey through the desert to the promised land! But in their grumbling, they are forgetting; God has a hand in all of this, God is going to care for them—even when they grumble.
Given what he had done (plagues, parting sea, and such), God might have chosen a bit of smiting. Certainly Moses, who had been head coach in this operation, might have reached his wit’s end. You can almost see him rolling his eyes. You can see Aaron, his brother, setting up the microphone and lectern for God’s updated message, “I’ve about had it with you folks, go back to Egypt, go back to slavery, I’m passing my expectations on to someone else . . . forget being the chosen people, I’m choosing a better lot.”
Nope, God sticks with the grumblers—in fact, he says, “Come morning, I’m going to rain down bread from heaven. I’m going to take care of you. In the evening, quail will come—enough quail to capture, eat and get you through the day, and in the mornings, I’m going to send bread . . . bread from heaven. It will be white and taste wonderful. . . .”
“This is bread that you can eat, but if you try and hoard it—try and keep more than your share or store it up—it will rot. It is bread that only lasts the day because it’s more than bread. It’s a symbol—let’s call it ‘daily bread’—a reminder that you and I have a relationship, and that despite your grumbling, despite forgetting that I’m the One who got you out from under Pharaoh’s grip in the first place, I’m not throwing in the towel. You are still my children.”8
Grumbling can serve a purpose. It helps us get things off our chest, but you and I both have met those folk who are perpetual grumblers—nothing is ever right. They are the kind of people who always see the glass as half empty, can quickly find the one chink in the armor, the one hair that is out of place. I have worked with so many adults who suffered under the harsh grumbling of parents who never believed their children were up to par, employees who suffered under the weight of a grumbling boss, and so on.
You know that kind of grumbling can build a moat—a moat that others prefer not to cross, a moat that keeps God at arm’s length. If nothing’s ever right, well then I can live in my own little world, arms crossed, eyes down—forgetting, as the Hebrews had, that God was not giving up on them.
Santa may know when you are naughty or nice, but God cares for you when you are both and even when you grumble. So God broke through the grumbling with a gift—a reminder—that they were his people and he was their God, and that even when things looked at their worst, He was not going to leave them to their own designs—a life of endless grumbling. That bread, which they called manna, broke through their grumbling and fed not just their stomachs, but their souls. It was an invitation to turn from griping about what they did not have, to embracing what they did—the constant and abiding presence of God.
What if God only cared for us when we had our act together? What kind of God would that be? No, the fact that we have a God who cares when we do not, says much more. The Venerable Fulton John Sheen, an American bishop of the Catholic Church, once wrote, “God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.” That is what those Hebrews learned in the desert. It is a lesson worth clinging to—especially when we find ourselves grumbling.
You may have something about which to grumble today—but has grumbling become a way of life? Do you feel like you are always getting a raw deal? The short end of the stick? Perhaps it is time to turn that leaf over—consider instead that God cares for you and loves you even in the midst of your grumbling. No doubt, if you spend some time feasting on the truth of that love, you will soon find your grumbling gone and your soul fed.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, even you had days when you grumbled—at the bickering of your disciples, the lack of faith of your followers, religionists who turned your Father’s house into a den of thieves. I thank you for loving me, even when I grumble. But help me such that my life is more than a basket full of lament. Give me eyes that see your hand at work in the world around me, and an open heart to allow your love to so fill me that what I offer you, and the world, is not my perpetual grumblings, but the very joy of heaven. Amen.
8 Exodus 16:11–31; I have paraphrased a bit here.