Near Sighted Faith, Week 4 Day 5, Exodus 16-17

Near Sighted Faith, Week 4 Day 5, Exodus 16-17

Sometimes I find writing these blogs quite easy.  I read, I pray, is start typing and they just come out.  Save it, come back a little for a quick proof read and some tweaks and I’m done.  Other times I read the passage, pray, and I got nothing.  Today, well today…

There’s this whole God – Moses/Aaron – Israelites dynamic with Moses and Aaron serving as a buffer, go between for God and the People.  And when the People get mad they tend to take it our on Moses / Aaron.  That’s probably safer than taking it directly to God.  You wouldn’t want to get God with the big G made at you after all.  And being the man in the middle is a difficult place to be.

Then there’s that whole grumbling.  There’s grumbling about no food.  There’s grumbling about no water.  There’s grumbling against Moses and Aaron.  And then there’s even grumbling about the grumbling when Moses calls them out, “You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.” 

And I like that it doesn’t matter how much manna that gather.  Whatever they gather is always enough and never too much.  But I could do without the part about the maggots, yuck! 

And there’s the keeping the Sabbath.  No gathering on the Sabbath but what’s gathered the day before is enough. 

And there’s eating the same thing everyday for forty years.  I’d be tired of it in the first week.  Can’t outdo Keith Green poking fun at that one, you can Google Keith Green and “So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt” if you’re not familiar with this:

“What…Oh no, manna again?

Oh, manna waffles….

Manna burgers...

Manna bagels...

Fillet of manna...

Mannacoti...

Bamanna bread!”

This is a blogging rich environment.  There’s enough here for pages and pages of blogging, but I won’t, collective sigh of relief.

But for me it seems to me that the central theme here testing, testing their memory and testing their ability to follow.  And a difficult test it is.  I think they fail the test because the faith is rather near sighted.  Guess they need some faith glasses.

First, they’re near sighted about the past.  Does anyone really believe that as slaves they, “sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted”?  Not likely There present predicament of being in the wilderness with no food or water has put a very rose colored pair of near sighted glasses on their view of the past.  They have a bad case of denial of past suffering of their time living by the Nile.  Nile-denial.

Second, they’re near sighted about the present, focusing on their problems and Moses rather than remembering focusing on God.  I don’t think that thought that God was going to starve them.  I think they can’t get past their hunger and thirst.  If they were thinking about God they might have remembered all He did to get them out of Egypt.  And why would God go to all that trouble to get them out of Egypt to kill when Pharaoh had been making decent progress on that task without God’s help?  The problem right in front of their face, or more accurately, in their stomachs, made them lose focus on God and what God had already done for them.

Third, they near sighted about the future.  God instructed them to not keep any manna for the next day, except on the sixth day when they gather enough for two days.  In fact, God even points out that He, “will test them and see whether the will follow my instructions.”  And at least some of them fail.  “However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell.”  Again, yuck! 

What do to about the near sightedness?  There’s no 1 Hour Glasses of Faith to go and pick up a pair of clear faith spectacles.  The answer is right there in the passage.  But the answer isn’t a pair of glasses, it’s a jar.  “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it.  Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come.”

I’m not big on religious artifacts.  Its way too easy to worship the artifact and not what it represents.  I thing that's why this one was to be placed “before the Testimony, that it might be kept.”  The Testimony was the place you went to worship God, to see God.  And when you went to see God, there would be the reminder.  A reminder of who God was.  A reminder of what God had done for His people.  A reminder of how God had fed His people in the wilderness. There would be a reminder of the character and the faithfulness of God.

I’m not saying you need a jar, but the human memory is a fickle thing.  And concrete things can help us to remember.  The Israelites would put a pile of stones to make a place where God was encountered.  They would name the place after what had happened there, another reminder of God and what He had done. 

What can we do?  A verse hung on the wall.  Keep pictures from a time and place where God was especially apparent in our lives.  Underline a passage in your Bible that was a help in difficult times.  Keep a journal, a log of prayers given and their answers.  And I’m finding even a blog help to remember.  These things can help us remember who God is, what God has done, and cure us of the near sightedness of our everyday lives and problems.  A kind of far sighted jar of faith.

God, help me to keep things in my life that remind of You.  Keep things that remind me of all that You’ve done.  Keep things that remind me of your character, Your faithfulness.  Never let me worship the things.  But always let those things draw me closer to You.  Amen

Leonard