"And the people complained against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?'" (Exodus 15:24)
Suffering is a part of the human condition ever since the Fall. More people in human history have known life times of suffering than life times of peace, prosperity, and freedom, for example, as in the United States of America.
In my reading of the Biography of Bonhoeffer, this reality was brought home to me in a very vivid, at times even depressing, way. The Germany of his time was filled with two wars, the chaos of the Weimar Republic, and the barbarism of the Nazi era. Amidst life's unanswered questions, Bonhoeffer concluded, "Everything we cannot thank God for, we reproach him for."
In the Exodus we read of the great deliverance of the Jews from 400 years of suffering under Egyptian slavery. The Exodus was a series of one "miracle" after another. But when the Jews were without water for a short time, their first reaction was not to thank God for what He had already done, for Who He Is, or anything else. Their first reaction was to complain, and it was a complaining which led to a desire to return to bondage. It seemed as though bondage with certainty was preferential to freedom with uncertainty. It was perversion of reality.
A life of faith and trust in Jesus Christ is a life in the freedom of "uncertainty" as opposed to a life of the bondage in "certainty." The foolishness of man will not allow him to see that what we call certainty is as fleeting as the summer wind. And what most would call uncertainty is really the glorious life of faith and obedience in Jesus Christ and His Word. It is eternal life; eternal security, as opposed to nothing of certainty or security.
When they were a few days without water, had the Jews just stop to realize what The Living Triune God had already promised, had already fulfilled in such glorious power, they just would have said, "Well, no problem. After all, His Name is, 'Faithful and True.' What we cannot see is more sure than what we can see."
Father, in Jesus' Name, may I always remember that. Amen.
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When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
