« The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer | Main | January is a Great Time to Sew »
Lessons on Contentment from the Israelites (by Naomi)
This morning I was reading about the Israelites after they arrived in the wilderness and discovered they didn’t have any food. They began to complain, saying, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt , when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.� (Exodus 16:3)
Reading this, my tendency is to berate them in my mind, thinking, “The Lord just delivered you from the Egyptians and parted the Red Sea and you are doubting His ability to feed you?� Then I started thinking about how many times I may act the same way.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on these verses, shares some interesting thoughts. “It is no new thing for the greatest kindnesses to be misinterpreted and basely represented as the greatest injustices. . . But discontent magnifies what is past, and vilifies what is present, without regard to truth or reason. None talk more absurdly than murmurers. . . When we begin to fret and be uneasy, we ought to consider that God hears all our murmurings, though silent, and only the murmurings of the heart.�
Often in our lives, especially as girls hoping to be married, our temptation may be to glorify, not the past, but the future. We think that if we were only married, our troubles would be over. But not so! We must not fall into the temptation of “vilifying the present� and thinking our current lives are troublesome. We must not forget to thank the Lord for His past mercies and remember that He doe not change. He has truly delivered each of us from the Egypt of sin and death and is going to continue to demonstrate His loving kindness to us now and in the future. At the present moment we may think we are hungering for something we don’t have, but that is only because we are not noticing the manna God is providing.
Let’s receive with gratefulness all the blessings God has given to us now, instead of looking to the past or future for our happiness!
Posted by lilypress at January 8, 2005 6:46 PM
