Are you like the Israelites who despite every miracle and wonder God showed and did before their very eyes, would still wish for Egypt, for their miserable life out of which God had rescued them?
God rescued them from the most inhuman of life in Egypt, bringing an end to their decades of slavery, of hard and unrewarded labor, of exploitation by cruel taskmasters and captors.
What is more, they were not only rescued, God even ensured that they plundered their captors, as though to redeem the spoils that had been accumulated by their sweat but enjoyed by the Egyptians.
And how did God do it? Did he just say a word and the Egyptian let them off the hook, off the labor field? No, God had to show his power, all the plagues in their own midst, but which never touched them except their captors.
And finally, the final escape miracle that would mark, physical, their separation from their slave master, the Miracle of the Red Sea.
Who else could how else could it have been done? There the Israelites fled, reaching a point where they stood between two walls! Ahead of them, the Red Sea, behind them, the Egyptians!
And there in their worst worrying hour, God would intervene in the most dramatic an powerful of ways: he would part the sea, safely see through the Israelites but drown the pursuing Egyptian army.
How exciting must it have been for the Israelites! The bible says in (Ex. 15:1-21) that they rejoiced and praised God.
How many times have you seen God’s hand in your life’s situation? How many times has God saved you? How many times have you seen impossible situations come and pass because somehow, God intervened? And for it you have rejoiced, and praised him? I am sure you can think of many times.
But how did it go for the Israelites? Did the excitement, the gratitude, did it last?
In verse 22-24 of Exodus 15, the bible tells us that shortly after the rejoicing and the celebration, the murmuring began:
“So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter…And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?” (vs. 22-24).
Were these not the same people who had been celebrating? The same people who had seen all the mighty works of the Lord?
Was this not the same people for whom God had time and again, provided water, quail, manna.....
How many times have you grumbled against God, only shortly after praising him, just because you again face some challenge?
Notice, the Israelites had now forgotten all the good, all the powers God was capable of, and that they had witnessed with their own eyes from the time starting in Egypt until they reached the wilderness.
In your grumbling against God today because of the situation you are caught in, do you even remember God’s might intervention in your life yesterday, last week, last year?
Why are you now so quick to murmur against God? Why are you now so quick to forget?
You know how the story goes: Only about one month after the first Passover: “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. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 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.”
How come a people rescued from slavery, would long to return to it? What could the Israelites have missed?
How come even after God has improved your life’s situation, you begin at some point in your new life, to wish, to long for the early life?
This story of the Israelites is a classic story of human nature, and its lesson relates very closely to our lives.
Think, reflect through your experiences, have you been in the midst of trial? When you are such trials, what do you wish for? Does your mind drift back to earlier days and places in your life—so that somehow you find yourself thinking that that was better place, that those were the “good old days”?
If you do, and many of us, do, know this: you are missing EGYPT, and the Ecclesiast warns against you:
“Say not you, ‘What is the cause that the former days were better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this” (7:10).