Numbers 11

What a chapter!

The people complain about not having meat to eat and they long for the days when they were slaves, because they had meat.

God replies," if meat is what you want then meat is what you'll get. I'll give you so much meat that it comes through your nostrils and you loathe it."

Then God sends quails and the people finally eat meat... and they die from it. Because (v.33) "the anger of the Lord burned against the people."

Our book group just met here in my office. During the conversation we started talking about the Old Testament. One person said that she did a year study on the OT, and didn't like it at all. This chapter is a perfect reason why it is hard to like the OT.

God kills people for complaining about eating the same thing everyday for years... manna.

Well, I probably would complain too. There is nothing that I would want to eat everyday for years. (Maybe pizza, but it would have to be really good)

So God kills them.

What then are we to say when God acts like a jerk? When God does things that are unlike God?

Do we say "well, don't complain." Easier said than done. Everyone complains eventually. I get a number of emails every day complaing about our president. (By the way, please take me off your list if you are sending them to me, they do no good for our country. Instead they widen the divide between our parties.)

*Funny sidenote: I picked Michelle up from the airport last night and as usual we had to leave through the toll booths. In front of us was a car that had a bumper-sticker with the word IDIOT on it, but it was made to look like the Obama symbol. What's funny is this car was in the toll tag only line and had no toll tag. They were trying to pay cash, but there was no one in the booth. It made me laugh really hard. If you are going to publicly announce that someone else is an idiot, you should do everything you can to not look like an idiot. Or as someone else put it, "it takes one to know one." This has nothing to do with politics, and has everything to do with complainers.

But there is no grace in standing behind the puplit every Sunday and telling people not to complain. Because there is a lot to complain about.

Life is rough. People are starving to death in Africa, our economy is in the gutter and there is violence all over the news.

And so we complain. But complaining doesn't do any good.

If you don't like the way the world is, do something about it.

God did.

He let the complainers nail him to a cross.