I remember listening to the stories of the Israelites wandering through the wilderness and messing up over and over, and thinking, How could they? How could they be so dumb? How could they be so disbelieving?
They got to the Red Sea and they grumbled.
They ran out of food and they grumbled.
They ran out of water and they grumbled.
They ran into enemy forces and they grumbled.
They ran out of food again, and they grumbled some more.
They got to the land of promise and they grumbled.
They grumbled and complained and moaned and whined until every last one of them was dead in the wilderness.
How could they be so stupid? After all, hadn't they seen God working? Hadn't they seen his mighty acts? Of course they had! So how could they be so miserably thick-headed?
But the more I've thought about it, the more I've lived, the more I've begun to understand.
For four hundred years, they had been slaves in Egypt. For four hundred years, they had been owned by the Egyptian slave-masters. Every waking moment was regulated by their overlords. Their backs were ripped by the whips. Their blood and sweat and tears were drained in the brickyards. Their children were snatched from their arms and killed by the sword or thrown into the river to drown. For four hundred years. There was no one alive who knew anything else, no one alive who even knew anyone who had known anything different. No one who could say, "When my grandfather was a little boy, we were free." The best they could say was, "There was a time, long, long ago, when we were free . . . " but no one knew anyone who remembered it.
And in all of that time, God seemed silent. He allowed their backs to be beaten. He allowed their best years to be spent under the lash of the Egyptian taskmasters in the Egyptian brickyards, until they were bent over and broken and buried in the sand of Egypt. He allowed their children to be snatched and slashed and buried in the river. For four hundred years he watched his people suffer and he did nothing -- nothing that they could see.
So they walked out of Egypt that Passover night with a 400-year-old memory of tears and torture, oppression and persecution, and, perhaps most painful, 400 years of the seeming silence of God. A bunch of plagues, a spectacular crossing at the Red Sea -- those things don't immediately erase a 400-year-old memory. They don't. When things went wrong, it would be easy to think that the things that had gone right were a fluke. When suffering flared back up, it would be easy to think that God had forgotten again. It takes time to build trust -- even with God. I'm not saying it excuses the grumbling. It doesn't justify the unbelief. I'm just saying I understand.
It's one thing to be physically free. Physical freedom can happen in an instant. In just one night, a Pharaoh can repent and a people can walk free. In just a moment, a person who has been a slave to sin her whole life can be set free by the blood of Jesus Christ. She can go to bed a slave, and wake up free. In just one moment. But it's another thing to learn to think free. It takes days and months and years to uncover patterns of slave thinking and to confront it and reject it. It takes time to renew the mind. At first, the fear is natural. It would require a deliberate looking past the evidence to believe that God can be trusted.
But there comes a time when the cycle needs to be broken. At some point, it begins to require a deliberate looking past the evidence to continue to hold onto the fear. The 400 years of slavery have shaped me and marked me. The marks of the whip are still on my back. The scars of the chains encircle my wrists. I can still feel them there. But to allow the years of slavery to continue to hold me is to deliberately pick up the chains and put them back on. The memories of slavery may still be fresh, but there are new memories: memories of a sea separating, of a rock splitting and pouring out water, of bread falling from heaven, of a mountain enshrouded with smoke and thunder and earthquake and flame, of an enemy falling back in defeat. Memories of presence and provision and protection. Those new memories must be acknowledged, counted, and clung to, not allowed to sink in the swamp of a slavery that no longer exists except in my head.
At what point does that time come? I don't know. For the Israelites, it came between the time they grumbled and snakes entered their camp and the time, very shortly after that, when the priests set foot in the full-flood Jordan and watched the water curl back, and the people crossed over on dry ground.
I used to think the Israelites were stupid. If they were, then I have been equally stupid. Sure, there are always difficulties that have about them the feel of the years of slavery. Sure, the years of slavery have left their scars. But memories of presence and provision and protection abound. It is time to leave the fear behind.
It is time to step into the Jordan.
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