July 3, 2025
The Israelites are making their way through their long journey in the wilderness. And make no mistake, it is a long and tedious journey. Nevertheless, there are many things for which they can be thankful. They are no longer enslaved in Egypt. The surrounding nations are leaving them alone. Every day they receive manna from heaven; food they don’t have to hunt down, prepare or even cook. Looked at this way, their lives are pretty good.
But that’s not the way they see it. They’re tired of walking. Water is scarce. And they are sick and tired of eating manna every day! Their focus on their little annoyances gets the better of them and soon they are dying in huge numbers.
Isn’t that the way it is? We have decent jobs. Our friends respect us; our families love us. We can afford to go on vacation once or twice a year. Our favorite team made the playoffs. We have so much to be thankful for!
Instead, we concentrate on trivial things. Our friend snubbed us the other day. Our coworkers make annoying sounds from their cubicles. Our spouse/lover/best friend has developed a new, very annoying habit. We can only afford to fly economy class to our vacation. And our team was eliminated from the playoffs!
We let a few trivial annoyances convince us life is worthless and sad. Soon, we are dying inside.
These annoyances come to us all. We can see them for what they are, trivial annoyances, or we can let them bring us down. A bad day becomes our bad life.
When the people’s complaining got to be too much, and they started dying, God helped them change direction. God helped them change their focus. God pointed them towards a healing symbol; a symbol God had told them to build. God moved their focus away from their problems to the God who had freed them, who protected them, and who fed them the manna for which they neither labored nor toiled.
From time-to-time, we all get hung up on the trivial annoyances of life. The construction that never ends, the difficult phase our child is going through, our beloved’s sudden desire to rearrange all the furniture in the house, our church’s worship services that have run ten minutes too long for three Sundays in a row.
When we do, we can sink into a deep morass of depression and despair. Or we can redirect our thoughts. We can turn to the God of life, reflecting on how much God loves us and how glad we are to have a chance to share that love with others.
We can choose death, or we can choose life.
I recommend choosing life.
God’s life-giving peace to us all, Pastor Ken.
