The whole community was in an uproar, wailing all night long. All the People of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The entire community was in on it: “Why didn’t we die in Egypt? Or in this wilderness? Why has God brought us to this country to kill us? Our wives and children are about to become plunder. Why don’t we just head back to Egypt? And right now!”Soon they were all saying it to one another: “Let’s pick a new leader; let’s head back to Egypt.”
Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in front of the entire community, gathered in emergency session.
Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, members of the scouting party, ripped their clothes and addressed the assembled People of Israel: “The land we walked through and scouted out is a very good land—very good indeed. If God is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land that flows, as they say, with milk and honey. And he’ll give it to us. Just don’t rebel against God! And don’t be afraid of those people. Why, we’ll have them for lunch! They have no protection and God is on our side. Don’t be afraid of them!”
But, up in arms now, the entire community was talking of hurling stones at them.
at the Food for the Journey day on Saturday at the Cathedral the speaker was saying about us needing to be honest before God and protest and that our prayers need to begin with the acknowledgment of our failings/weaknesses and God’s unconditional love. This passage seems to be saying to me that they were looking continually at Moses being their saviour and not God – how often I look to others for solutions that really rest with God! so even when Joshua and Caleb tried to redress the balance they kicked off even more – love it that Joshua is showing his leadership skills but that is giving the story away isn’t it!!!!!
Why were te people in uproar?….because they were angry that the journey hadn’t been as thay planned, that the journey was hard and testing and they hadn’t just waltzed into the promised land. In the middle of their journey God had been there and had provided daily for them.
What has particularly spoken to me today is that as we travel on our journey of faith we’ll never be the same as we were earlier on in our journey. We’ll never inhabit the exact place that we inhabited before, we can’t go back on our journey and ‘unexperience’ events whether good or bad. On our journey we should reflect on what God is doing with us in the here and now and where his journey is leading us, we should also look back and reflect on what God has been doing on the journey but not look back and yearn for what had been.
It strikes me that as the Israelites reflected on their current situation they failed to consider God in the equation, they looked only at Moses and Aaron, and when they looked back to where they had been they completely bypassed the times when they had experienced God at work and failed to recognise the significance of these events in their journey.
“The whole community was in an uproar ..wailing to God all nght long..” Seems as though things haven’t changed much! Nobody complains quite like the church community on occasions, when things don’t quite go our way! The people of God were more content to go back to the familiar “let’s head back to Egypt” rather than to launch out into territory where God had plans which were prosperous and exciting.
There are times when think I consciously hold back from what I feel God may be saying, or where he may want to be leading, (especially if it means suggesting we launch out of our churchy comfort zone), for fear that the community to which I belong may respond by being up in arms, although I hope they may not go as far as wanting to stone me…although.. you never know!!
I was with some people recently who felt frustrated that things were maybe being prevented from being done because the dissenting voices held more sway than the opinions of those who appeared be hearing more clearly what God might be saying.
The feeling was that if a different approach was taken there would be uproar! Sometimes though, the uproar may be necessary. In the end God’s will prevailed and thankfully put up with a bit of uproar, probably more than we can (if anything, this passage tells us that he is used to it..and maybe even provokes it..) It may be an indication that is in, in fact, God who is at work!
Well of course I never whinge and panic when it feels like I’ve been led out into a desert to die at the hands of ‘giants’ and I remember with rose-tinted specs how good things were in the old land… not me!
Who’d want to be a leader eh
There are times, when I am frightened and deeply confused about the desert. Even if I entered it with open eyes and full of decision. I am scared and horrified. And there are moments when I am not sure whether the promised land is still worth the effort. When I am let down by people who held and probably still hold my arms up, when I am in deep fear of their cast stones hitting my face. Trusting into one\’s own call then aligns immediately with questioning self-assurance on a very deep level. Certainly there are deserts that kill!
But staying – pinned down by the fear of change – instead of moving is, I know and deeply believe, worse than confronting and entering into the process of change. Staying, or even going back to Egypt, would keep the power over the own destiny in the oppressors\’ hands. Something I do not like at all! I will continue to whinge and panic, to vent what is inside, but hopefully then to be able to rise, stand up and walk further.
A song my significant other gave me a while back lifted my spirit in a deeply desert-like situation and just got me back into \’enterprise mode\’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D48VNNFZQ7U