Learning from others' mistakes

I find myself reflecting on the Israelites in the desert. They'd labored under terrible oppression for four hundred years. Finally their lives had become so bitter and the deliverance so complete that they dared to leave the enslaved life they'd come to know. Then they found themselves delivered from certain death at the hands of Pharoah's army, into a desert which presented them with challenge after challenge. No water. No food. Seraph serpents. Against each of these, they grumbled. Not merely praying for an answer, they grumbled against Moses and against God, not believing that the One who'd delivered them from slavery so wondrously would provide for their needs. They formed a calf to worship while Moses was on the Mount Sinai, and generally acted as if they didn't really believe in God at all, despite all they'd seen. When the abundant fruit of the promised land was brought before them, the scouts brought along with it their pessimistic report of the likelihood of God delivering them into this land of plenty.

So, basically, the children of Israel proved over and over again that they trusted only in their ability to provide for themselves.

We're not so different from them. We may not ever melt down gold to make an idol to worship, but we cling to plenty of things that are clearly not God's will for us. And we're probably even more likely than our long-ago forebears to trust only in the portion of the road we can see, and our own ability to move ourselves along it. So when we get to a choice between the "blind faith" we so disdain and the wrongful act that we can see will yield at least a short term gain or pleasure, we choose the latter. "God helps those who help themselves," we insist counter-scripturally, rationalizing the self-centered choices by which we advance ourselves - professionally, economically, intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually - at our brothers' expense.

We seem to have lost the ability to trust that if we do the right thing, loving God and our neighbor, God will be faithful to ensure that all is ultimately well.

I think this is partly because we insist on seeing this world only in its own context. Matthew Kelly would say we've lost sight of our essential purpose. Tarek Saab (the Catholic speaker, not the Arab-Venezuelan politician) would remind us that if we would live rightly, we must never lose sight of our death and desired destination.

God has delivered us from our slavery to sin, but we only want to leave the parts that we deem as really bitter. The "not-so-bad" parts? Well, we think we'd just as soon hang onto them for a while or, having given them up, we continue to pine for them.

The land ahead is filled with abundant life! Will we not hunger to become the person God dreams for us to be, and thereby enter it?