Why the Wilderness? (Part 2)

How in the world did a people delivered and bound for the land of promise end up in a desert for forty years?

Unbelief, Scripture tells us.  (Hebrew 3:17-19)

Unbelief has a twin sister: Unthankfulness.  I find it hard to imagine one without the other.

If we fully believe, if we fully trust in God’s character, we will be thankful people.  If we refuse to trust Him, unthankfulness and grumbling naturally follow.  We cannot be grumbling and trusting Him simultaneously; they are mutually exclusive.

Each moment we spend complaining is a moment in which we are ignoring His blessings – all of them undeserved.

I’m not saying all this because thankfulness is a lesson I can check off my list.  I’m saying this – to myself first – because it is something I struggle with every. single. day.

As pathetically slow to learn as the Israelites may have been, I can point no fingers.  I can only read their stories and see myself reflected in them time and time again.

Those horribly ungrateful people – God fed them for forty years.  Gave them water.  Kept their shoes from wearing out.  And what was their response?  Grumbling and complaining at every turn.

They were so blind they couldn’t see that their attitude in the wilderness was the very attitude that landed them there in the first place.

They could have lived lives full of joy and peace and abundance in the Promised Land.  They could have gone straight from the miracle of deliverance to receiving the promises God had given them.

They chose unthankfulness instead.

Chose.

And it was a tragic choice.

Years have passed.  Those desert-wanderers have all died.  Yet the heart of unbelief still beats strong, enticing us to thankless living.

How often we give in.  How often we spurn His gifts, refuse to trust, or simply take His goodness for granted.

And still He feeds the grumblers with His manna.  Every. single. day.

Grace, all beautiful grace.