"It is tempting to look at the ancients of Israel, as they wandered and grumbled in a desert for forty years, and wonder at their behavior—..... These people are key participants in mouth-dropping events at the Red Sea, where the God who has chosen them offers a display of all that means. These same people then come to doubt God’s presence among them, God’s power, God’s concern, God’s plan for their lives. Did they really believe they could be as moved and cared for by a golden ornament, molded at their own hands, as they were with the God who split open the Red Sea?
Though the specific events of Egypt could have similarly been held at a distance by the psalmist who was writing years later, the writer nonetheless stood poised to remember the events of Israel’s past so as to see his present situation more clearly. As if forging it in his own memory, the psalmist speaks bluntly of Israel’s experience in the desert: “Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise” (106:24).
What does it take to come to despise what once seemed promising?
What would it take for you to refuse to believe the one thing you want to believe most?
When hopes are dashed in trying places, I don’t believe their reaction to the desert is so far removed from our own. The Israelites were not unusually slow in understanding; they were no more stubborn than you or I am. But they were entirely disappointed; all they longed for seemed altogether unreachable. They could not believe that the wilderness was the way to Canaan. They could not see how their current trouble was consistent with a God who loved them; they could not see how their pain could possibly work for good in the end. Who among us cannot at some point relate?
When Jesus healed a man who was called Legion because he was possessed with so many demons, the townspeople had a peculiar response. Mark describes the scene and its aftermath as a crowd began to gather. “When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid” (5:15).
This man was someone they were familiar with; the crowd actually recognized him. He was the one they saw dodging in and out of nearby caves, living as a total recluse, cast out of society, an outcast even of his own mind. Yet, seeing the one they were used to avoiding suddenly dressed and in his right mind evoked within them, not delight or amazement, not thanks or hopefulness, but fear. No one suspected that this was a shadow of all they longed for themselves. Seeing Jesus, the instrument of healing—the one who set right what was wrong—they were simply afraid. And they begged him to leave.
As the Israelites beheld the desert and the townspeople beheld Legion, both missed what God was doing because they were troubled by the failures of their imagination. It brings quiet inquiries to mind. Do we not still oscillate between being too uncomfortable to trust and too comfortable to believe?" RZIM/Jill Carattini
What does it take to come to despise what once seemed promising?
What would it take for you to refuse to believe the one thing you want to believe most?
When hopes are dashed in trying places, I don’t believe their reaction to the desert is so far removed from our own. The Israelites were not unusually slow in understanding; they were no more stubborn than you or I am. But they were entirely disappointed; all they longed for seemed altogether unreachable. They could not believe that the wilderness was the way to Canaan. They could not see how their current trouble was consistent with a God who loved them; they could not see how their pain could possibly work for good in the end. Who among us cannot at some point relate?
When Jesus healed a man who was called Legion because he was possessed with so many demons, the townspeople had a peculiar response. Mark describes the scene and its aftermath as a crowd began to gather. “When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid” (5:15).
This man was someone they were familiar with; the crowd actually recognized him. He was the one they saw dodging in and out of nearby caves, living as a total recluse, cast out of society, an outcast even of his own mind. Yet, seeing the one they were used to avoiding suddenly dressed and in his right mind evoked within them, not delight or amazement, not thanks or hopefulness, but fear. No one suspected that this was a shadow of all they longed for themselves. Seeing Jesus, the instrument of healing—the one who set right what was wrong—they were simply afraid. And they begged him to leave.
As the Israelites beheld the desert and the townspeople beheld Legion, both missed what God was doing because they were troubled by the failures of their imagination. It brings quiet inquiries to mind. Do we not still oscillate between being too uncomfortable to trust and too comfortable to believe?" RZIM/Jill Carattini
