Tag: Faith

Morning Musing: Matthew 8:26

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“He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Our weather yesterday was gross most of the day. Today’s not promising to be much better. It wasn’t particularly cold, which was nice, but it was rainy and windy and overcast all day. Then, yesterday afternoon it got foggy out of nowhere. It was the kind of thick pea soup fog you usually only see in the morning except it was at 3:00 in the afternoon. Driving toward on particular intersection, I couldn’t see the traffic signal until I was almost through the intersection itself. It reminded me of another thing in thankful for. Today I’m thankful for not being able to see tragic signals.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 16:1-3

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“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

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“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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Morning Musing: Exodus 14:10-12

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“As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians coming after them! The Israelites were terrified and cried out to the Lord for help. They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Isn’t this what we told you in Egypt: Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you have taken the journey of parenthood, do you remember when your kids went through their whiny phase? If you don’t nip this in the bud as a parent, what starts as a fairly natural phase can become a personality trait that sticks with them to the eventual frustration of everyone around them, but that’s a conversation for another time. What is it that prompts a kid to whine? The same thing that tempts us to it: not getting our way. When the Israelites saw the Egyptian army heading toward them, they felt like they hadn’t gotten their way…and they were terrified. Their response should have been a major red flag for Moses, but that’s only really visible thanks to hindsight. Israel had a great chance here to demonstrate great faith in the God who was in the process of rescuing them. Let’s talk about what they did instead and why it is a warning for us.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 12:33-34

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“Now the Egyptians pressured the people in order to send them quickly out of the country, for they said, ‘We’re all going to die!’ So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their clothes on their shoulders.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes God’s instructions don’t make any sense. He tells us to do something in a certain way that doesn’t really fit with how we would do it, and our first instinct is to question Him and do it our own way. When God gave the Israelites the instructions to have a feast with unleavened bread, that didn’t make a lot of sense. It seemed arbitrary and random. At least it did until it didn’t. Let’s talk today about God’s odd instructions, and why following them really does make the most sense.

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