See What the Lord Has Done

I just spent some time in chapter 6 of The Story.  Here are the things that my brain decided to click on...scattered as they are.

First, how happy would you be if you realized that as God is chastising the people and telling them that anyone over 20 will die before going into the promised land your birthday is next week?  Bonus!

The flip side to that is being the last person to die...everyone is staring at you every day, waiting for you to die so they can go into the promised land.  #thatsabadday

It intrigues me how quickly the Israelites forget everything.  They see God do amazing things through the plagues to get them out of Egypt so they can worship Him, yet they grumble.  They see Pharaoh and his army drowned in the sea, yet they want to go back to Egypt.  God feeds them manna from the heavens, yet they complain and want meat amongst other things.  God leads them with Moses, and yet they say, "we should appoint a new leader to take us back to Egypt."

Does their grumbling ever work out for them?  Not really, if you ask me.  They are shamed every time something bad happens.  Moses corrects them and makes them drink the dust of the golden calf.  God wants to wipe them out and start over with Moses multiple times, yet somehow Moses talks God out of it.  They want meat, so God sends quail to them, up to two cubits deep (that's 3 feet deep) and a day's walk thick in any direction.  That is a lot of quail.  When the people received this blessing, they went hog wild.  Scripture states that each person gathered no less than ten homers.  That's enough quail to fill a 76 cubic foot box--think 75 milk crates full of quail per person.  God gets so frustrated with their gluttony that he strikes them with a plague.

And then there are the 40 years.  God tells the Israelites to go in and take over the promised land.  They send spies, who report how great it is.  Yet, they doubt in their own abilities and don't even think about God's abilities.  Only two, Caleb and Joshua, understand.  As a result, they wander for 40 years until all the doubters and non-remember-ers die off.

We need to remember that with God on our side, we can do all things.  Our faith, if we allow it to be big enough, will put us in places where God HAS to show up.  But do we have that kind of faith?

Moses had that big of a faith.  He wasn't afraid to go toe to toe with God about things.  Though he tried to get out of a lot of things, God always showed faithful when Moses chose to have great faith.  He threw down his staff and God turned it into a snake eating snake.  He stepped into the Red Sea and God parted the waters.  He reminded God time and time again that Israel was His people and God showed them mercy.

Yet, Moses was susceptible to being too full of himself.  He takes credit for bringing water from a rock for the people, rather than giving God the glory.  His parting gift for that event, a trip to see the promised land, but not enter in.

If we think about us, where do we fail?  What do we whine about that we don't have?  How glutenous are we with our lives?  Why has God shown us mercy and not sent a plague?

For me, the big struggle is ministry.  All too often, because this is my job (which I love), I do things rather than engaging with God to do things.  I have a faith in God, yet I rest too much on the faith in myself, especially since I am doing "God's work".  I realize that I am no different than Moses or the Israelites.

What I need is to live by the statement, "See what the Lord has done."  I realize that I am gifted with the chance to be a part of that doing and that is glorious.  Yet, it is not my life I am living, but Christ living through me.  If I dechurchify that statement, its me choosing to live my life differently--not focusing on what I want and need, but putting what God wants as the driving force.