God parted the sea and allowed the Israelites passage on dry land to escape the Egyptian army. Only three days later, the Israelites couldn’t find water and began to doubt Moses and the Lord. They found a water source, but its waters were bitter and undrinkable. For this reason they called that place Marah. Immediately, the people began to grumble against Moses. They had just walked through walls of water, on dry land through the sea yet they doubted God. He did not provide good drinking water for them. “Oh, woe is us!” But did they ask for God’s help? Oh no, they cried and whined and blamed Moses. Moses cried out to the Lord, and God told him to find a certain piece of wood and throw it into the water. He obeyed, and the waters of Marah became good. It’s easy for us to be critical of the Israeli’s choice to turn from God because they were disappointed.
But did you ever stop to consider how short our own attention span is. Sometimes it’s easy to complain about a situation when we’ve only had problems for three hours or less! Do we ever stop to think what could be written about us if we were in Scriptures? When we stop trusting in the goodness of God and see only our own limited resources, we can become bitter and even blame God.
We are no different than the Israelites except in our own minds.
What does God say? “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. It’s pompous when we think we are better than others.
After finding the wood that made the bitter water sweet they continued their journey.
They came to Elin, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and there they camped beside the water.
Next they came to the wilderness of sin. This is between Elin and Sinai. This was the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.
This means that it was only a little over a month since they sang that song of gratitude at God’s triumph over the Egyptians. And what are they doing? Well, they are loud and vocal complaining that they would rather be back in Egypt.
I guess it was easy to forget what captivity and making bricks was really like!
And it wasn’t just a few people who complained, it was the entire group!
We all like to think if we saw a miracle it would bring us closer to God.
Remember, we are just as bad as the Jews and miracles don’t necessarily convert to faith in God.
Think about it: We live with miracles everyday. The birth of a baby, love, music, a body that heals itself! What isn’t a miracle? And yet these don’t bring people closer to God. They just call it nature and expect it! Quoting the Israelites, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread.”
It’s obvious by these statements that the human mind can make up its own stories.
This wasn’t the situation in which the Israelites were living.
The problem is their short memories and the fact that they did not have to provide for themselves in Egypt, no matter how meager the rations.
It seems most people prefer to be taken care of – even at the price of losing their freedom.
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