Ya got to wonder . . . is God with us
or not?
That was the question the Israelites
were wondering as they waited for Moses to produce some water for them to
quench their thirst in the desert. Our
reading this morning is the fourth occurrence of the Israelites complaining
since they hightailed it out of Egypt . . . the fourth time that they moan and
groan . . . whine and lament . . . and, it is still early in the story as this
is still only the beginning . . . this story goes on for forty years and they
are well on their way to setting a record for complaining. The Israelites keep looking at back to their
time in captivity . . . sure life was hard, but they had shelter and were not
wandering around in the middle of nowhere; they had food and were not hungry;
they had water to drink and were not thirsty; they had a life—as bad as it
was—and were not constantly wondering where their wandering was going to lead
them. They really wondered about God . .
. is God with them or not!
Don’t we all? Don’t we all wonder from time to time whether
or not God is really with us?
If any of us is half-way participating
in life then we should all know that life is not always easy . . . should know
that life can be difficult . . . overwhelming . . . depressing and oppressing .
. . a burden that sometimes feels as if it is more than we could ever bear . .
. down-right crummy. Life is hard. Author and Catholic priest Andrew Greeley
puts it this way:
“Life
is filled with so many senseless events. Mindless tragedies fill our newspapers
every day--airplane crashes, the murder of innocent children, insane terrorism,
natural disasters. And much in our own lives seems without purpose or
meaning--like a rainstorm on a picnic day, a bad cold when we are having a
party, a handicapped child, the early death of a parent or spouse, a broken
marriage, a car that won't start in the morning, a wrong number in the middle
of the night, the treason of friends and envy of neighbors.”
Life is hard and sometimes, we the
faithful, wonder . . . where is God!
Sometimes we are quick to judge the
Israelites as being ungrateful and whiny people after everything that God has
done for them up to this point: brought plagues and disasters upon the
Egyptians to get them their freedom; led them through the Red Sea when it
seemed as if they were about to be annihilated; fed them when they were hungry
and thought they were going to starve to death; and, now, gave them water to
quench their thirst. It seems as if the
Israelites have a memory problem . . . have they forgotten all of these
experiences of God’s presence in their journey?
And, yet, we are no different than the
Israelites when it comes to our own faith journeys. Whatever memory defect that the Israelites
suffer from seems to be one that even we experience from time to time in our
own lives. Often our faith is based upon
what we want God to do for us . . . how we want God to conform to our needs and
necessities in ways that make sense to us and happen when we want them to
happen. We judge God’s faithfulness to
us by God’s ability to deliver the goods.
God is with us when God is doing what we want God to do for us.
The problem with this is that we don’t
want to stop and consider what God has done for us in the past . . . we don’t
want to consider the evidence that is all around us that speaks to God’s
presence being with us. The Israelites,
with short-term memory loss apparently, do not consider all that God had done
for them despite the fact that all of them experienced it first-hand. They have forgotten the plagues . . .
forgotten the splitting of the Red Sea . . . forgotten the bread from
heaven. They are thirsty and they want
something to drink and they want it now!
And, that is the problem . . . it must
be instantaneous . . . it must be right now.
Like the Israelites we lack patience.
Our concerns are immediate . . . we are looking toward the future . . .
we want God to solve the issue right now.
In our minds, if God is everything that we think God is, then what is
the big deal for God to clean up our lives for us, after all, God created the
heavens and the earth. We throw at God
our desires and we want God to fix them . . . fix them now or at least no later
than tomorrow. And, we wonder . . . is
God with us or not?
This sort of faith is great as long as
we get what we want when we want it . . . but, does it ever really work that
way? What happens in those long pauses
of silence and stillness when the darkness descends and there is no response
from God to the prayers we lift up? What
happens when nothing turns out the way that we want it to . . . things don’t
work out as we hope that they will?
Well, we wonder . . . is God with us or not?
How quickly we forget.
When was the last time you sat down
and reflected upon your life and God’s presence in that life? When was the last time that you considered
those times in your life that God answered your prayers . . . provided a
miracle . . . helped you through the difficulty you were experiencing? When was the last time you paused, reflected,
and acknowledge God’s presence in your life whether it was a good time or a bad
time?
We need to remember . . . we need to
look back on our journey of faith. We
have all seen the story about the footprints in the sand . . . where there are
a series of two footprints in the sand that represent Jesus walking with us . .
. and, how there were times when there were only one set of footprints in the
sand. The assumption is that Jesus has
left the companion to make the journey on his or her own; but the truth is that
those are those moments when Jesus actually carried the individual in hard
times. That is what we need to remember
. . . we need to remember that God’s presence is always with us . . . always!
In our remembering we come to realize
that God is not the solution waiting to happen or some sort of quick fix to
numb the pain. No, God is a presence in
and with our challenges of life. In our
suffering we discover an opportunity to discover that presence of God in our
lives . . . God joins us in our darkness . . . joins us in our suffering. Thus it is that we become more than our
problems or their solutions . . . we become one with the God who loves us and
showers us with grace and presence never to abandon us. As the Apostle Paul says:
“We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory
of God. More than that, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering
produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces
hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” (Romans 5:4-5)
In our story, Moses names the place
where the water is provided Massah and Meribah.
Do you know what these two names mean . . . what they represent? Well, I can tell you that they do not mean
“the source of abundant water” or the “rock where the Lord provided”. Massah means “testing” . . . Meribah means
“quarreling” . . . Moses names this as a place of trial, contention, and
strife. It is here that the people
experience the presence of God . . . it is here that they have their
thirst—both the physical and spiritual—quenched and satisfied. It is here that they know the presence of God
. . . that they know that God is with them . . . always with them.
Life is hard . . . it makes us wonder
. . . we wonder where God is . . . we wonder whether or not God is with us . .
. we allow ourselves to utter the question: “Is the Lord among us or not?”
How will you answer that question for
yourself? Amen.
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