Numbers 11:1–6
Complaining is remarkably easy to learn and surprisingly difficult to quit. Give me a slow driver in the left lane or a printer that suddenly decides it no longer recognizes the computer it has worked with for four years, and I can become remarkably gifted at identifying everything wrong with the world.
Israel had become pretty good at it too.
Numbers 11 opens with the people complaining about their hardships. This is the same group that had watched God send plagues against Egypt, divide the Red Sea, guide them with a cloud, provide water in the wilderness and feed them every morning with manna. They had experienced more obvious miracles before breakfast than most of us will see in a lifetime.
Still, they complained.
Then the complaints became very specific. “Oh, for some meat!” they cried. They started remembering the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic they had eaten in Egypt. Apparently, slavery had become strangely nostalgic once the menu in the wilderness got repetitive. That is what complaining can do to us. It distorts our memory. We begin romanticizing what God delivered us from because we are frustrated with what He is currently providing. The manna had not stopped. God was still feeding them every day. The problem was no longer provision. The problem was perspective. I understand that more than I would like to admit. It is easy to become so focused on what I wish were different that I stop noticing what God has already placed in front of me. The blessing becomes ordinary. The miracle becomes expected. Gratitude quietly leaves the room while complaining, pulls up a chair and gets comfortable.
Numbers 11 is not telling us that we should never acknowledge hardship. There is a difference between honestly bringing our struggles to God and developing a spirit that is never satisfied with Him. Paul later writes, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NLT).
Gratitude does not mean everything is good. It means God is still good. So before you spend today naming everything you wish were different, stop and notice the manna. Look again at what God has provided, where He has carried you and how faithfully He has stayed with you.
Complaining keeps asking, “Why isn’t this better?”
Gratitude asks a better question, “God, where have You already been good to me?”
That question can change the wilderness.