When It Feels Like You Deserve To Grumble & Complain

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent my quiet mornings reading through the rescue of the Israelites from Egypt.  I’m doing my reading out of The Story right now, and it makes everything seem just a little more real.  And I’ve been struck by one thing.

I cannot stand the Israelites.

Holy complainers!  They are never satisfied, always focusing on the negative, like grumbling is their profession.

We want out of Egypt! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God sends Moses, a few plagues, and saves every.single.Israelite.

The Egyptians are too close! We’re all just going to die anyways! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God conveniently swallows them all up in the Red Sea.

This desert is too hot/too long/too uncomfortable! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God reminds them that He is taking them to a Land that is better than any they’ve seen.

We’re hungry! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God provides manna.

We’re thirsty! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God provides water.  From a rock.

I could go on, and depict how they get impatient waiting just a few days for Moses to come down from the mountain, you know, during his semi-important meeting with GOD, and decide to melt down all their jewelry and form an idol instead.  An idol.  That they made.  From their JEWELRY.

These people were not the brightest.

Or I could tell you how, after all that traveling, after all the ways God proved Himself faithful to them, they took one look at the Promised Land and decided it was too much for Him to handle, too hard for them to conquer, and whined about going back to Egypt.  Where they had been slaves.

{grumble, grumble, grumble}

Let me just tell you one thing, if I were God, I would not have waited so long to come down on these ungrateful people.  They drive me bonkers!

And as I was stewing in my irritation at God’s chosen people, angry at how they were so selfishly complaining without end, and refusing to see God’s blessing and obvious faithfulness, I heard God whisper to my heart,

Sound familiar?

And I shut my mouth about the stupid Israelites.  Because I have been acting just like them.

My Mom died! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God wept with me, and brought me the very best stand-in “mom”, and a few more priceless older “sisters”.

I don’t have a boyfriend! I want to get married! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God sent me Jon.

Marriage is HARD! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God is making it into something that only He can.

It sucks not having that mom-daughter relationship anymore!  {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God gave me my sweet Emily Ann.

My baby is sick! This isn’t fair! {grumble, grumble, grumble}
God single-handedly saved her life, and brought her back to full health.

Grumbling.  It’s been my primary form of communication with God for the last 5 years or so.  I feel like I got hit with lots of “unfair” in a short period of time, which is the reality of life, except that life had been pretty “fair” to me before that, all things considered.  So the “unfair” was a bit of a shock.  Maybe one I needed.

The thing is, the unfair things are true.  My mom died, marriage is hard, friendships are sometimes harder, money is tight, things are not perfect, grumble, grumble, grumble! The God things are also true though.  He is faithful, He blesses me, He makes things new.  And guess what?  Those things are unfair too.  They are more than I deserve.  While I’d like to think I’m always right and perfect and deserving of blessings (right??), the truth is that I grumble, I complain, I’m stubborn, I’m selfish.  I don’t deserve all the blessings He has given me, nor will I deserve the ones He is planning to give me in the future.

Ephesians says that in God’s love, He has adopted us, given us grace, forgiveness, inheritance, and riches!  It says He has lavished these things on us, and sealed us for Himself.  These truths far outweigh my grumbles.  These truths humble me, and make me inexpressibly grateful that we do not serve a God who is “fair”.

We serve a God who is LOVE.

It’s a powerful thing, to be faced with your own ickiness.  The Israelites bothered me to no end (“They are SO ungrateful!  Don’t they see how faithful the Lord has been to them?!?! Gee Whiz…”) until I realized I had been behaving just like them.  And then I bothered myself to no end.  Blech.

Grumbling has no place in my life.  Not if I know Who is in charge of my every day.  I can talk to Him, tell Him how I’m feeling, and know He cares that I bring my hurts and frustrations to Him.  But ultimately, I have to trust that He is faithful, that He has always been, and that He loves me.  And those things drown out the grumbling, by default.  Because He’s proven Himself true over and over, and He’s worth trusting.

So I will do my best to keep my eyes on Him instead of on the desert.  Because the thing is, the desert isn’t ever going to change.  It will always be hot, dusty, and uncomfortable.  It will never be the place we were meant to settle down and dig our feet into.  But God?  He’s always up to something new.  Something beautiful.  Something worth watching.

And I don’t want to miss it.