Friday, March 15, 2013

grumblecakes‏

Numbers 11:4-6
 
4 Contemptible people among them had a strong craving for other food. The Israelites cried again and said, “Who will feed us meat? 5 We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. 6 But now our appetite is gone; there’s nothing to look at but this manna!”
 
Only liars and thieves eat grumblecakes; and those people go to prison. Just ask the Cheat.
 
Before we're too quick to throw Israel under the bus, it is helpful to consider how easily our attitudes are affected by our diet and routine.
 
Do you ever get hangry? You know, you haven't eaten and you find yourself getting short with people. Your mood slowly changes and your work ethic withers into apathy. You are hungry and angry.
 
"there's nothing to look at but this manna."
 
This provision of God given faithfully day in and day out.
This literal wonderbread that appears with the dew of morning.
This bread of life serving us and keeping us alive.
This heavenly food.
 
You mean that manna?
 
Yep, that's the one.
 
Yeah, that does suck! (VVCSV)
 
How bored we become with God's provision.
 
This bread, that wine, this water, that prayer, this sermon, that song. etc...
 
It is always that fish, those cucumbers, that car, those friends, that body, those kids, that prestige, those clothes.
 
I don't want what God is giving to me.
My appetite for Him and His ways is gone.
 
My hunger is for my former way of life.
So we return to our scrapbooks and swoon as we remember the passions of youth.
Oh why did we flee them so quickly?
There was so much we now would do then.
 
Beware the folly of forgetting that Egypt was death.
It was slavery.
It was forced labor.
It drove us to cries for deliverance.
It prompted us to despair.
 
But it had onions.
 
And with thoughts like this we fill our scrapbooks of yesteryear with today's backslidings.

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