Missing Egypt

The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!”
(Exodus 16:2-3 Holman Christian Standard Bible ©®)

The comfort we have felt in our religious traditions is in grave danger of becoming a memory that we prefer to revelation and understanding that Jesus is releasing to His people. He is calling us out of the places of denominational and congregational civil wars to a place that is unfamiliar and scary. Getting our part right includes asking the right questions when we see the new and scary developments.

The desert is a place where food and water and shelter are hidden. Our expectation that these things are hidden for us instead of believing that they are hidden from us will change our success at finding them. The book we call Job is one of the earliest writings about Yahweh. In it, He starts a dialog with an adversary (“satan” = “adversary”). As the dialog progresses, its subject, Job, becomes more and more a victim of satan.

The end of the story finds Job’s relationships and possessions multiplied beyond what they were at the beginning of the story. I suggest that his responses to the adversarial encounters are the raw material from which his final blessings are created. He expected his God to bless him, no matter whether he could understand or properly assess the blessings he would receive from Him.