LENT 2020: Day 15

• Lent 2020: Day 15 Friday, March 13, 2020:
  Psalm 95; Exodus 16:9-21; Ephesians 2:11-22

     And the LORD said to Moses, saying, “I have heard the
    murmurings of the Israelites.”

This sounds so simple. It’s nice and neat. The LORD hears. The LORD provides. All is well.

Not quite. 

We lose something in translation.

As Robert Alter explains, “‘to hear’ in biblical idiom can mean ‘to heed’ (i.e., ‘to obey’), but God may at the same time be expressing annoyance with the people.”

And the people give God even more reason to be annoyed just a few verses later when, after God sends quail in the evening and then bread in the morning, some hoard it.

We shouldn’t be too quick to condemn them, though. Terrence Fretheim observes that their “food crisis has led to a faith crisis.” He continues: “Material and spiritual well-being are more closely linked than we often care to admit.”

“The resolution,” writes Fretheim, “is not to ignore the need for food but to tie the gift of food to God’s intentions.”

And Fretheim emphasizes that the food itself is natural, which he explains is a reminder that “God’s gifts to Israel are to be found not only in the unusual but also in the everyday.”

It’s easy to see God in the extraordinary. It’s harder to recognize the divine in the ordinary. It’s hard to see the daily little miracles all around us each day. And that is the sin especially of those of us who are privileged, whose wealth blinds us from seeing the gifts God has given and the ways God is working.

As we continue on our Lenten journey, may we train our eyes to see the daily miracles that surround us.