Wilderness Training
Aw, yes. The wonderful past. We hold a certain nostalgic view of life’s previous decades. Our colloquial phrase is the ‘good ole days.’ How else could you explain a significant increase in musical cassette tapes? In the year 2022, cassette sales increased 28% over the previous year. Do you remember cassettes? Those things were awful: costing an exorbitant sum; offering terrible music quality; forwarding past your preferred song; flipping the cassette over; taping the broken ribbon; etc. Why, of why, in the era of digital, instantaneously available music would someone want to relive the ‘good ole days’ and plop their overpriced cassette into their Sony Walkman that has dying batteries (because the batteries were always dying or dead) and listen to music through those cheap, one-size-fits-none, and uncomfortable foam- cover headphones? Why, indeed? The answer is simple: we are nostalgic about the past. We remember the good, and we forget the bad.
In the book of Numbers, we find an example of unhelpful nostalgia. After Moses led the people from Egypt, they journeyed into the wilderness. The barren land served as a training ground for entering the Promised Land. Part of this training was learning to survive through God’s provision of manna. Some troublemakers in the group, however, began to grumble. They lamented their previous life in Egypt – as slaves.
4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” (Numbers 11.4-6)
My first question: What are ‘leeks’? They are tall, straight vegetables with an oniony flavor. And apparently, they grow in Egypt but not in the wilderness. More seriously, though, this rabble sows discontent among the group with their selective-remembering of their enslavement. Their varied diet or veggies and meat made being slaves a desirable circumstance, at least when compared their repetitive diet of manna, which was God’s provision for them in the wilderness and sometimes referred to as the bread of heaven. The passage continues on to explain the nature of manna.
7 The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. 8 The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a hand mill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into loaves. And it tasted like something made with olive oil. 9 When the dew settled on the camp at night, the manna also came down. (Numbers 11.7-9
For Hebrews, they faced a question: how would they interpret their present situation, through a stilted recollection of their past or a celebration of God’s daily, albeit unspectacular, deliverance? Well, for the “rabble” the answer was easy: recollect fondly their enslavement. In pining for Egypt, these malcontents neglected their amazing deliverance through the plagues, Passover, and Red Sea. After seeing these astonishing acts of God on their people’s behalf, their follow-up response was “How come we don’t have any leeks?”
These complainers failed to realize a repeating truth: deliverance by God does not make life easier. Some among the delivered seemed to believe that once they sauntered through the Red Sea, they would dance directly into the Promised Land. They forgot about the expanse linking the two places – the wilderness. In the wilderness, God was training the people for their next destination: the Promised Land. But before receiving this gift, they needed to be further developed. Such development, however, was stunted by the regretting of their salvation.
For us, we are reminded the wilderness provides training. And training, by its very nature, pushes us toward uncomfortable circumstances, but these events are preparing us for the blessing ahead. The question before us remains the same at the delivered Hebrews: do we still yearn for our defeated past or do we embrace the preparation of our unpleasant present? Only one, and only one, leads to a hopeful future. Only one, and only one, lead to the Promised Land.
