Digging in Deeper: Exodus 16:1-3

“The entire Israelite community departed from Elim and came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left the land of Egypt. The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Kids can be whiny. I know this. I have three of them. If you have kids, yours are whiny too. I was whiny when I was a kid. Whiny kids is a natural part of life. They do it because they want what they want (like all of us do), but they don’t have any power to get what they want. So, they use the only tactic they think they do have: to irritate the world around them into giving it to them. Kids have to be taught by loving parents not to do this or else they will grow up to be whiny adults. Whiny adults are a sad thing to see. They are an even more irritating thing to experience. The roots of whining actually go deeper than this, though. More than merely a lack of power, they reveal a lack of something else the next part of the story of Israel’s journey into the wilderness gives us the chance to explore.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 15:25-27

“So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable. The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. He said, ‘If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.’ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had a teachable moment? It doesn’t really matter right now if you were the student or the teacher in it. Teachable moments come along every now and then and bring with them the opportunity to impart possibly life-changing information or wisdom. Israel’s experience at the waters at Marah provided just such an opportunity for the Lord. Let’s take a moment to think through what God had to teach them, why it mattered, and why it points to something important about the nature of our relationship with Him.

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