in God, trust in God—with our lives. In a word, being “righteous” is not so much about being right as it is about being right with God.
This is a crucial pill to swallow because our human tendency is to try harder, when what God is saying is “Trust in Me.” If you are having a bit of trouble with that, take a moment tonight and if the sky is clear where you are, go outside . . . see the handiwork of God. If God can do that, think what he can do in you, with you, through you—let God whisper to you as to Abram, “Look up.”
Of course one of the purposes of our faith is to empower us to live godly lives—lives that bespeak of the Holy Spirit of God working in and through us. Sadly, we too often think that’s our work to do, when what we are called to do first and foremost is give our lives to God and let God work in and through us. It really turns our human tendencies upside down, does it not? Perhaps it is time to focus not so much on being right, as on being right with God. How to do that? Look up, and believe, believe in God.
A Prayer
From deepest woe I cry to Thee;
Lord, hear me, I implore Thee!
Bend down Thy gracious ear to me;
I lay my sins before Thee.
If Thou rememberest every sin,
if nought but just reward we win,
could we abide Thy presence?
Thou grantest pardon through Thy love;
Thy grace alone availeth.
Our works could ne’er our guilt remove;
yea, e’en the best life faileth.
For none may boast themselves of aught,
but must confess Thy grace that wrought
whate’er in them is worthy.
And thus my hope is in the Lord,
and not in my own merit;
I rest upon His faithful word
to them of contrite spirit.
That He is merciful and just,
here is my comfort and my trust;
His help I wait with patience.7
Amen.
—Martin Luther, d. 1546
6 God has yet to rename Abram in this passage; this occurs in Genesis 17.
7 Martin Luther (d. 1546), translated by Catherine Winkworth (d. 1878). From The Hymnal 1982 (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1985), #151.
The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
—Exodus 16:11–12
I confess that I have been a grumbler from time to time. My grumbling is caused by lots of things—perhaps I did not get my way or got stuck in traffic. Sometimes it is when I am hungry, and if I am hungry and at a restaurant and I get an inattentive waiter—well, I grumble. I know people, and have prayed with a lot of them, who have much better reasons to grumble—they have cancer, or their marriage or a friendship is in serious trouble, maybe a child has run off the rails or a job is in jeopardy. There are reasons to grumble. Some of them rather innocuous, but some downright appropriate.
For instance, in our lesson from Exodus we hear that “God hears” the grumbling of the Israelites and sets out to do something about it. Some would say they had every right to grumble—at this part of the story, these descendants of Adam and Eve, the Hebrews, were rescued by a spirit-empowered Moses from years of toil and the burden of unceasing labor from dawn to dusk. They are on their way to a new land—that land flowing with milk and honey. Here we find them on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed Egypt—roughly forty-five days in and the grumbling starts.
Why? Well they are in the desert—food is short. Have you ever been around kids late in the day between lunch and snack time? It was probably something like that, except it is thousands of kids at the same time. The grumbling gets so bad some begin to say it would have been better to have died under whips, eating the food fit for slaves, than to continue on this journey through the desert to the promised land! But in their grumbling, they are forgetting; God has a hand in all of this, God is going to care for them—even when they grumble.
Given what he had done (plagues, parting sea, and such), God might have chosen a bit of smiting. Certainly Moses, who had been head coach in this operation, might have reached his wit’s end. You can almost see him rolling his eyes. You can see Aaron, his brother, setting up the microphone and lectern for God’s updated message, “I’ve about had it with you folks, go back to Egypt, go back to slavery, I’m passing my expectations on to someone else . . . forget being the chosen people, I’m choosing a better lot.”
Nope, God sticks with the grumblers—in fact, he says, “Come morning, I’m going to rain down bread from heaven. I’m going to take care of you. In the evening, quail will come—enough quail to capture, eat and get you through the day, and in the mornings, I’m going to send bread . . . bread from heaven. It will be white and taste wonderful. . . .”
“This is bread that you can eat, but if you try and hoard it—try and keep more than your share or store it up—it will rot. It is bread that only lasts the day because it’s more than bread. It’s a symbol—let’s call it ‘daily bread’—a reminder that you and I have a relationship, and that despite your grumbling, despite forgetting that I’m the One who got you out from under Pharaoh’s grip in the first place, I’m not throwing in the towel. You are still my children.”8
Grumbling can serve a purpose. It helps us get things off our chest, but you and I both have met those folk who are perpetual grumblers—nothing is ever right. They are the kind of people who always see the glass as half empty, can quickly find the one chink in the armor, the one hair that is out of place. I have worked with so many adults who suffered under the harsh
