October 2020...

The pandemic drags on. We are blessed here in Venango county to have had a very few cases and only one death. But life has been changed dramatically. You are no doubt tired of masks, hand satirizer and stepping back when talking with a friend on the street. I know I am. We need to continue Covid mitigation practices. They do reduce the spread of infection. And we’ve see spikes in infection rates after summer holidays when large numbers gather without masks or distancing.

The pandemic started me thinking about Biblical records of impatience within God’s people. I thought of Israel during the Exodus. They ran out of water in the desert, but God provided (Ex. 15:22-27). A little later food began to run short and God miraculously feed them with quail and manna (Ex. 16:1-15).

Day after day manna appeared on the ground each morning. The people simply gathered it up. God provided their daily bread on a daily basis.

But after some time the Israelites began to wish for something more, something different. “O boy, what I wouldn’t do for some of the fish we used to eat in Egypt. It was free too, remember? You just pulled it out of the Nile. And the cucumbers! The melons, onions and garlic! But I’ve lost my appetite: we never see anything but this MANNA. Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna at dinner. Always MANNA! AAAGH!” They started to despise God’s provision. (Check it out in Numbers 11:4-6. If I’m lying’ I’m crying.)

Manna was miracle food, directly from the hand of God. And yet the people of God began to wish for the cucumbers they had eaten while slaves. They would have returned to slavery for an onion rather than eaten manna under God’s promise.

I sympathize with their fatigue of a one course diet. I like cucumbers too: but to give up a daily miracle because it had become familiar, to despise the gift of God as if it were not good enough.

One of the great challenges of faith is to recognize God is faithful in every circumstance of life. It is only in times of struggle, that we learn he is always faithful. It is only when we get through to the other side that we recognize the he was with us in the valley of the shadow.

Sometimes the life of faith requires stick-to-itiveness. We have to be patient in the present because God has good things for us in the future, if we believe.

So don’t give up! Hang in there and you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!

  ~Pastor Byron