When even God seems unreasonable
Can he also give bread,
Or provide meat for his people? Psalm 78:20
Read Numbers 20:3,9–13
Poor Moses! Isn’t this just how it goes sometimes? I think of his plight, how he has to lead these people, not through his own choice. God put him in the situation. They’re quarrelsome and unreasonable and recalcitrant. They want to go back to Egypt, which, now that they’re out of there, out from under the oppressive yoke, seems to them like paradise.[1] Moses just wants to get onto the Promised Land, but he never will. He will have to do everything he does now entirely in obedience to a promise whose outcome he himself will never see. All because, I suppose, he vented his frustration. That’s the way it reads. He must have infringed on God’s nature, but how? Now God himself seems unreasonable. Sometimes it’s like that.
Prayer
O Lord, I know that you have made me, or I would have no life. I know that you have called me or I would have no purpose. I know that you have provided for me or I would have no provision. I know that I am on my life’s journey with you, but I do get impatient. I don’t cope with uncertainty. I don’t like the times of waiting. I’m nostalgic for the past then, because the past is fixed and certain and I don’t have to hold on to any promise to go there. I don’t need faith for that. I hardly need to trust you at all. So my prayer is to trust you with a holy reverence and a joyful confidence for where you are leading me.
[1]Exodus 16:3; Numbers 11:5