Tags
balance, bread, change, change management, faith, God, gratitude, hunger, manna, new, relationship, responsive, romanticize
On Sundays at church, we’ve been reading our way through Genesis and Exodus. Last week we just read about the parting of the Red Sea. This coming week, we find the freed people of Israel complaining about hunger. In Exodus 16.3, the people of God complain, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
These faithful people went through a brutal, oppressive enslavement and witnessed a miraculous freeing by God – walking through a parted sea while their enemies were crushed. They have everything they ever wanted – true freedom. And yet, here they are, at the first sign of adversity, looking longingly back at slavery, because at least there, you were fed.
I love that one of the powerhouses of the Old Testament, Moses, was the first to experience change management. Moses was the first in what would become millennia of rabbis, pastors, and faith leaders who will hear, “I wish things were like they used to be!” All those leaders have come to know that the hardest part about change is experiencing the discomfort of the new, next thing. Any trace of difficulty or adjustment immediately sends people into romanticizing the way things used to be – remembering only the good of the past, and not all the equally bad or much worse parts of the past.
As I think about the ungrateful and unbalanced perspective of the people of God, I wonder what things we are romanticizing in our lives. What change are we bemoaning without appreciating all the ill we left behind – and some of the really great things in this new reality? The good news is that we have a responsive God. Despite the Israelites’ moaning, God provides them food that they need – even if that food came in a different form. Our promise is the same. God expects us to be in relationship so that God can be responsive. Our work is to be open to the manna that might not look like sourdough loafs we love, but that feeds us in new ways.
This weekend my parish is hosting its annual Fall Festival. Like any major event, there is a flutter of activity and anxiety about making the event a success – both for the tangible results of raising money for the parish and our outreach efforts, but also for the satisfaction of seeing months of labor come to fulfilling fruition. Consequently, the St. Margaret’s campus is a bit different this week. There are many more people on the campus, a lot more activity around the church, and the grounds have been beautifully transformed as we prepare for our guests.
