Boxes

Sometimes, in our effort to be spiritual, we store our lives in neat, tidy and separate boxes. We go to church, pray, go to a Bible study, tithe, pray some more, and hang out with a Christian sister or brother for some not-just-on-a-Sunday fellowship. 

All well and good.

But the rest of our lives is in other boxes. We have our financial box; it's our money, after all, and we spend it as we choose, right?  We pay our bills and then whatever is left over is ours. We only consider the spiritual aspect of our money on Sundays mornings (or maybe not even then--or we pop a fiver into the plate and call it good). 

We have our media box. We watch, listen and read whatever sparks our interest or what we want to keep up on.  We really don't think about spiritual implications of what we are putting into our hearts and minds.  Sometimes we watch or read religious teachers, almost as a substitute to spending time in the Word.

We have our family box.  We spend time together, and that is very important.  We take our children to church and then whip out our cell phones during the sermon--the implicit message we are sending is that if the sermon isn't interesting then we can use other means to keep our attention.  We try to eat dinner together, or maybe, we all sit around on our phones, with a few exchanges here and there.  Maybe we do a fine job with our family, watching movies and going places.  But other than going to church, do we spend time talking about God?

Then we have our work box. We work and come home exhausted, upset or just plain wanting the day to be over.  We plop on the couch and check out.  We play video games, spend time on our phone or just want to be left alone.  We may even love our job, but it takes a lot out of us, either because we are doing the work of two people, or because our society is so rude and demanding, that we are drained by our interactions with others.  The last thing we want to do when we come home is be social.

Our lives look like a storage unit filled with lots of boxes; some are labelled and some are not. Then we close the unit's door. We forget what each box contains. 

Finally, there is our social box:  How do we process the news swirling around us, and what do we believe? We can be real nice to people until someone mentions something political and/or societal, and BOOM! we are free to be as nasty, aggressive, gossipy or antagonistic as we want to be, because it's OK to let fly these days on certain subjects.  We tone it down at church and smile when someone says something we disagree with, but on the way home, watch out.  Our words are nothing but judgments on the person we talked to--how could they be that stupid/naive/wrong?  We don't think that way...why should they?

OK, let's tie this in to the desert experience of the Israelites in Exodus.  We see them, in chapter 15, complaining that (a) there is no water and (b) the water they find is bitter.  

God directs Moses to toss a piece of wood into the water, and it becomes potable. God then warns the people that provision from Him is based on obedience to Him: "There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test.  He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'” (Ex. 15:25-26)

God is saying, in effect, Don't put Me into a box of your own choosing. I am the God of everything: food, drink, heat, wanderings, joy, and provision. Don't act like pagans.  You are My Chosen People, and I want you to act like it.  Otherwise, you lose My protection, and you will be down range of all sorts of afflictions and trouble. 

Jesus warned the people of avoiding the same pitfall: "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matt. 6:7-8)

The Israelites, after receiving water from the rock and camping at Elim, where water and shade were in abundance, (Ex. 15:27) they went right back into putting God into boxes:  

Box 1:  He did lots of wonder-working signs to vanquish Pharoah, his gods and his society, but that was then, this is now. 

Box 2:  He provided water, true, with the wood thing, but God can only work in small increments of mightiness and His power doesn't reach into right now, right here, where we are. 

Box 3:  Hey, the food we brought with us is dwindling, and we feel panicky. God provided before, yes, but that was then and this is NOW! 

They begin to grumble: 

"The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.'” (Ex. 16:1-3) 

Really?  But if we don't unbox our life with God, and let all of what God has done/does stay right in front of us, we see only limitations, one-off's and things happening back then, but not now: 

Sure He did it back then, but He won't do it this time. 

God, because of His holy character, is the same yesterday, today and forever.  As He did with the water, He will do with the food: 

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.'” (16:4-5) 

It's not that God is giving them random instructions:  He wants the people to unbox and look at all He has done, and will continue to do.  He also wants the people to understand that His provision is commensurate with their obedience:    

"So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, 'In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?' Moses also said, 'You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.'” (16:6-8) 

Boom!  There it is:  Their grumbling is against God. 

Our grumbling is against God.

They put His provision into a box, stored it away, and now in their forgetfulness, they accuse Him of inconsistency and the failure to provide. 

Whoa. 

We may never admit it, but we do the same thing.

Solution? It's time to clear out the storage unit.