People's Complain

‘’…Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: ‘’who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlics; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!’’ (Numbers 11:4-6 Nkjv version)

The bible inspires me a lot. If you read it with a revelation and also as history; actual things that happened, you will find it interesting to read, may be even humorous in some cases.

Lack sometimes causes one to be irritable, even angry, other times unreasonable. I have been in lack and I know it is not easy when you are so broke that you cannot borrow some more from the kiosk guy because you already owe him, the butcher guy too and you happen to pass by your neighbour’s house and smell chips, pilau meat or choma; you want to ‘hate’ God!

You reminisce on the last time you ate chicken, you remember that you were so full, you didn’t scale the meat off the bone properly.

 You wish you were given the same chance to eat that chicken, you even see yourself in your mind stripping the meat off the bone literally.I think lack has that Psychological effect on most of us if not all and so were the Israelites!

In their mind, some recalled how they ate melons at Wa Jonah’s birthday, the cucumbers they ate at Wa Timo’s wedding and others the meat they marinated with onions and garlics during Zechariah’s graduation party, I mean look at it with the eyes of today, to the Israelites these were delicacies and don’t we all cook our very best dishes during such events?

So here they are; in the desert, the delicacies are in the past, being fed with manna daily and water that Moses had to strike from a rock!

They aren’t even sure whether they will wake up the following day and find the brook dry or may be, you know may be what if manna failed to come as usual.

The way we also sometimes think that God forgot to answer our prayers and have to go fending for ourselves and fulfilling the promises he made to us on our own because He took so long to fulfill them?

Sometimes we want to think that the people spoken in the Bible were of a different species! No, they were humans, the same way you and I argue out cases in our different capacities and all of us need to be heard and understood.

How do you pray? How do you ask for things? Do you demand? Do you complain and compare or do you ask in humility? Favour comes when we ask in a humble way. Not only does God likes it when we ask with the right attitude, we humans also like it when our fellow humans ask in a gentle way. We sometimes don’t get our prayers answered because we go like

"Dear Lord, I don’t like it that you gave me this kind of a husband, so and so’s husband is way better than mine, he buys her cars and mansions and I am still in this ramshackle of a house.

If you would only have given me such a husband as my neighbour’s, I would not be this poor.’ I ask, if God was a man and you keep praying such, don’t you think he would block your line or shut you off completely?”

 Thankfully God is not a man but I know sometimes he wonders what he should say regarding such and probably he keeps those kind of prayers in a ‘Pending File’ somewhere till you learn that verse in the bible that says the fervent effectual prayer availeth much.

When you put your request in such a way that it is not offensive, conspiratorial and full of laments, I do believe your request is heard and answered in time.

Most of us happen to be left in the wilderness while others enter their Godly Inheritance because they argue with God, they correct him and even gives God direction as if he needs it.

 They will complain that their neighbours are doing well; but have they ever stopped and asked themselves how their neighbours or friends got there?

May be these successful people in their lives did their part, persisted and endured their wilderness till they made it.
Today I pray that we learn from the Holy Spirit of God how to pray the prayer that is fervent and effectual that will avail much in our lives.