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Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid. John Wayne
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Life is hard. After all, it kills you. Katharine Hepburn
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Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt
in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that
order. David Gerrold
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When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am
always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
Sydney J. Harris
I have been reading through Exodus. There is a lot going on in these early Exodus
stories from the desert. A lot of
powerful things have happened, but bottom line, there the people of Israel are,
in the desert. And life is hard, scary,
ugly hard.
The people are thirsty
hungry
besieged by enemies
But then something incredible important happens
God gets involved again,
And God rescues
Suddenly instead of hunger Manna
Instead of thirst, Water
Instead of sure defeat, victory……….
But in the end…..after all these positive things have
happened
There the people of Israel are, still…
In the desert
And it is still hard times
And they still are in jeopardy
Still needing the help of God to make it through.
There are a lot of lessons here…. I struggled with what to
pick out, but these are the one’s that kind of stuck in my head.
First lesson, God can do a lot. In the Exodus stories God gives the people
what they need.
But God doesn’t magically send them, or us to the Promised
Land….
We don’t get to skip the desert…
And therein lies the problem.
When we are in the desert, when this are not going well,
It is so easy to lose sight of all that God has done, and
instead, look at the desert…
That is one of our many problems… we so quickly focus on the
negative
We know how the Israelites felt, as they faced that desert
We have been there, some of us may be in that place right
now
But when we need to get through the deep water
To have our hunger dealt with
To have our thirst quenched….
We are asked to remember
That in the desert, God will be there.
It’s a matter of trusting.
Trusting that the God who has acted, will act.
Trusting that in spite of the fact that the
Resolution of those issues we face, is not complete
That in spite of the fact that we don’t magically end up
with no problems.
God still acts
Still saves us from those things
That diminish and threaten us
Rosalind Russell was a beautiful movie star several decades
ago. She was successful not only in Hollywood but also on Broadway. But perhaps
her greatest triumph was her gallant fight against arthritis and cancer. After
her death, this little poem was found tucked in her ever-present Bible:
"Trust him when dark doubts assail you.
Trust him when your faith is small,
Trust him when simply to trust him
Is the hardest thing of all.“
Trust him when simply to trust him is the hardest thing of
all.”
This is the first lesson we can draw from today’s stories
This leads to the second thing that occurred to me. That we are asked to be grateful, to have the
eyes of gratitude. Often we are
gratitude challenged. We human beings
are never satisfied. We continually want more than we already have.
I have spent a little time around farmers. One thing I know, they are rarely
satisfied. I used to sit in the Red
Rooster in Reardan, Washington and listen to the wheat farmers. If it rained there was there is too much
rain, and they complained. If it didn’t rain they would say it was too
dry. Again, they would complain. Quite honestly they were never happy
Nothing is ever quite the way we think it should be. We have our agenda, and by golly God ought to
get with it! What’s wrong with God
anyway? Why doesn’t God just give us
what we want.
Kind of silly isn’t it. But I go there. Many of us do. The point if this story is that God can be
trusted, even in the hard times, to give us what we need
No, God doesn’t always lavish grace on us to the point that
we have all we ever thought we wanted
It is not that we are so blessed that there are no longer
any negatives. Life often remains hard.
But this is the important thing to remember, from this story
There is enough
Notice that in the story God gives enough for each day…..In
this story no more than enough. They get
only enough for a day - but no less
either, they do get enough
Recently in the US, on TV and in big mega churches there are
people preaching what is often called the prosperity Gospel. This is a big thing in some circles. Preaching that faith in God leads to
affluence. And the cool thing is the
pastors personally prove it.
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article detailed accounts of the
wealthy pastors club. According to the article, Creflo Dollar, who was just
arrest for assaulting his daughter, drives a black Rolls Royce and travels in a
$5 million dollar jet; Benny Hinn lives in a $3.5 million home and drives an
$80,000 Mercedes-Benz G500. You get the
idea. Salaries for these ministers are
typically kept confidential. But in a 1997 CNN interview, Hinn said he earned
between $500,000 and $1 million annually.
According to current estimates it is now much higher than that.
This theology's emphasis is on God's promised generosity in
this life and the ability of believers to claim it for themselves. If God loves
us, it teaches, then God will reward us with a new home, a good job, or good
health. Bottom line? God wants us to be
prosperous. Not just prosperous,
amazingly rich! We can faith our way to
wealth. If that were true I have some
friends who would be amazingly wealthy!
But the Lord gave the Israelites just what they needed. What
they received was good enough for a single day. The people we asked to not only
trust, but to be grateful. To accept the gift, and find a sense of comfort with
that, a sense of gratitude. And sense
that God, and what God was providing, was enough
What does gratitude do?
I is a huge part of what keeps us from always grasping, from
hording…
It is interesting that the people of Israel could only
collect enough for the day, no stockpiling.
What they tried to save spoiled, went rotten.
We have a tendency to stockpile for the future, for fear of
running low or running out. Have you ever observed communities the day before a
possible snowstorm or windstorm? People rush to the grocery, buying milk, bread
and supplies, just in case. There’s a communal panic that seems to set in
whenever the weather forecast sounds extreme.
In hard times it is sometimes difficult, because of fear, to
be generous. It is hard to be generous
when we are not grateful for what we have, but want more.
But
When we trust
And are grateful
We can have grateful attitudes
And with that open hearts
And ultimately open hands
