We are concerned here about our wilderness experiences. We may not be found in the slavery of Egypt, but we are not yet in the Promised Land. We always face transitions. There is commonly a vestibule to the higher levels of our lives. Many persons stall there – moving laterally not yet wilderness free. Even institutions, including churches and denominations, colleges and governments, may stall there or moving, return to the wilderness. (Perhaps, they backslide.) The list of biblical characters is long for those who started the journey only to get stalled in the desert of the wilderness, or fall back to it. The fall back may mean death. Things seem, on occasion, not to be as good as they were. There were flesh pots in Egypt, now there is only manna before our eyes. Even this is distorted in a full analogy, in that Israel had more than manna. There were herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. They took animals with them from Egypt. What would these be contributing if not meat and milk and materials for clothing – even if limited in supply? There were berries on bushes, and birds from the skies. They overstated the situation as one might overstate the potato in the West and rice in the East. Manna was Israel’s staple. It was their guarantee of life – miraculously provided, fresh every morning. It became natural and boring for them.
Israel had left Egypt, and had become a free people. Other persons joined them in their transition to a promised society, better than any of them had ever known. Not long after setting out there appeared distortions and grumblings among the people. These people began to be greedy for even better things, and the Israelites themselves wept again and cried, Will no one give us meat? Think of it! In Egypt we had fish for the asking, cucumbers and watermelons, leeks and onions and garlic. Now our throats are parched; there is nothing, wherever we look, except this manna. (It likely related more to coriander than garlic.)
As is so often the case in similar circumstances, there had been a shift in values among the people. Nothing was praised about freedom; nothing about the growth to maturity for a free and diverse people; and, nothing appreciative about the miracle of the manna provision. In the complaint they were blaming, not only Moses, but God. We know they were wrong because God was angry and Moses was troubled. Understandably, Moses became sorry for self and complained about his assignment under God. He would rather die than carry on. (Numbers 11:1-15) A person can cast his or her situation as bleak. It may be so.
Marriages, jobs, educations, even ordinary friendships may be evaluated through the steps from slavery and elusive life to freedom and joy, under God. We may enter into a relationship with contradictions between emotions, commitments, values, and the like. We must come to decision time to either grow so to enter first a temporary wilderness of learning and adapting, in finding maps and strategies for success. We may decide to avoid that step so wander about, starting over, and sinking our lives in the Egypt experience. Or, we decide to go forward, but we need the transition of the desert, so to stop playing to the immediate and old appetites. We may tarry, resist, and wander about losing our dreams of goals. Or, we go on. We can take on the work of the future. We may, like Israel, lose our own generation and fumble through life, in shuffling along to the promised land. So we move along, if we do, and arrive in some schedule to the promised land having learned love and limitations; having gained family and friends; having worked and achieved; having to give up some things thought to be good before advancing to the better after experience. There are time blocks, seasons and transitions. Each has blessing, and each has some future expectation. The pattern is so common in moving us forward that one wonders why we do not spend more time in examining both our lives and the process. We are not what we were but there appear strong indications about what we will become. The current manna is not the ultimate. Not all the desert people found fault. Most knew they were on their way. We are as well. One of the challenges of our lives is to fill in some of the illusory details of the individual lives of the ancients. We may find that in personal needs and interests there is wrestling with change. They too loved their families and a good life. Part of the good life is found in making it with attitudes, and part in finding it in progressions. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020