Wednesday, the second week of Easter

Exodus 15:22-16:10

They went three days...

Three days!  Three days after the Lord triumphed gloriously!  Three days after they saw the glory of Egypt drowned in the sea!  Three days and they were thirsty and they grumbled.

Some times the people of Israel are unbelievable.  Were they really so hard hearted that after only three days they began to doubt God?  Could they really have believed that the one who parted the sea for them would abandon them to thirst after only three days?

Then God makes the water sweet.  Then he promises to be their healer.  Then he brings them to Elim with its twelve springs and seventy palms.

Then on the fifteenth day of the second month, they grumble again.  They complain that God did not kill them in Egypt.  They whine that they have to starve to death, when they could have died in Egypt with plenty to eat.

They never seem to learn the lesson that God will provide.  There seems to be nothing that God can do to convince them that He loves them and will care for them, to convince them that they are indeed His people.  Not the plagues, not the freedom, not the parting of the sea, not the destruction of the Egyptians, not the cloud or the fire, not the sweet water, not the promises, not the beautiful oasis.   Nothing seems to get it into their thick skulls, that God will care for them.  As soon as they're hungry, they assume God will let them starve.

We wag our heads at them. What fools they were!

 Would we really have done much differently though?  Are we really any better?  Don't we doubt God's love every time it gets tough for us too?  Every time we worry about the future, we add our voices to the chorus of Israelite grumbling.  No matter what God does for us, no matter how many times He proves Himself, we doubt and worry and fret over the smallest things.  We act as if our financial woe, or relationship problem or health concern is all of a sudden an insurmountable task for Him who parted the sea, for Him who rose victorious from the grave.  In a way, we are worse than the Israelites, for we have Christ, we know the extreme lengths that God will go to out of his love for us.  We have the Spirit, God lives with in us and we within Him, and still we worry.

It took them three days to forget and to grumble.  Sometimes I am blessed if I make it three hours between a blessing and the next moment of worry.  What a fool I am!  What fools we all are, grumbling against the Lord.