Normal.
I often mock the pettiness and downright silly decisions of the Israelites throughout Scripture.
“C’mon man! Moses was having a one-on-one with the Almighty! You couldn’t wait, like, just a few more days before making some golden calf to worship!”
“So Jonah, you’re just gonna sit there and pout because God is merciful to more than just your people?”
The Israelites are quick to grumble more than once. However, through a conversation with my husband I realized that one of their first times to complain was more human than I had expected.
According to my calculations, at the time a little more than 5 months of being in a new country, he should be missing home. After all, when I made a journey to his land I had felt the same. While he longs for a good parrilla filled with half a cow (see the picture), I was longing a bit more superficially for Wendy’s and Chick Fil A.
The Israelites’ first complaint was for water, and rightly so for the whole wandering in the desert ordeal. But their next groaning, for their murmuring stomachs:
“If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Exodus 16:3 NIV
Pots of meat. When I looked up an Egyptian recipe with this description, I found Kabab Hallah which literally translates to cubed meat made in a pot. Our mortal longings are centered on what we shall do to fill our stomachs.
Unfortunately, the Israelites had gotten too comfortable with slavery. Perhaps it’s similar to they way convicts grow accustom to life behind bars. Three squares and free cable and internet, who could ask for more?
Personally, I worry about growing used to the American way again. The job I’m in feels pretty corporate, and yet, I do need to pay the bills. That’s why it’s so important that we remember.
Katie remembers how faithful God has been throughout her time in Uganda. I had to remind my husband that what he left was not as beautiful as he was choosing to remember. Well, aside from the asado. He does have a point there.
He had forgotten, however, how many of his friends had abandoned him; how his church did not care about his spiritual growth; how there wasn’t much of a future for him in that small town.
How when I had first visited his hometown, which was actually a visit to a friend’s home, I was struggling with why I was in Argentina at all. One of the mornings, I was walking through the farm land of my dear Alejandra’s home with a plaguing question. If God wanted me in India, what was I doing in Buenos Aires?
That same evening at the church I was attending during my mini vacation, a guest speaker talked about his future mission to Spain. He mentioned that he had always felt called to go to Spain, but then proceeded to share about his last eight years serving in Bolivia. Of course I had to ask. If he knew where he was going, why did he go backwards, geographically speaking?
He looked at me with a smile. He had clearly wrestled with that same thought more than once. But Christ had given him a peace to know the answer.
“I would never have been ready to go to Spain from the beginning,” he said. “Who I am, through the testing and trials of my time in Bolivia, makes me a better servant for Spain now, not then.”
I was so stunned that even when my future husband had come to introduce himself to me that same night, I don’t remember. It certainly was a packed night in my history.
How easily we can forget what we’ve been set free from. How much more there is for us on this side of eternity. Let us stop worrying about what will fill our stomachs, even if it is a natural worry, and let us depend on Jesus. This Jesus, who called himself the Bread from Heaven; more satisfying than any pot of meat, any asado, or even Chick Fil A.