"And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him."
Exodus 32:1
This verse is from when Moses was up the mountain communing with the Lord. And, yes, it was a long time, and yes, perhaps the people legitimately thought he was dead. But instead of asking Aaron to talk to God for them, or praying to God themselves, they decided to ask for idols of gold. Gods that can be made weren't really going to work out, and they had so very recently witnessed miracles, but already they are ready to turn back to things they perhaps had gotten used to in Egypt.
Unfortunately, I think we are much the same. We aren't very patient, especially with God. We expect him to snap his fingers and solve all of our problems, and when we don't see that happen overnight, we turn to other objects of worship to fulfill our desires instead. As with the children of Israel in this chapter, it clearly isn't going to work, but we still do it, almost like addicts keep trying to fill internal holes with whatever obsession of choice, even when they/we have already seen that it doesn't actually fill anything more than temporarily, and actually makes the hole bigger..
God didn't send us to earth to be coddled. He loves us, no question, but he loves us enough to teach us to solve our own problems when we can, and to learn some patience and faith... to grow up to be strong and capable. With the Israelites, after this he lets them wander for 40 years in the wilderness before he takes them into the promised land that he was going to give them. He could have saved them a lot of trouble if he had just done it immediately, but what would they have learned? ... Sometimes I think that we get some delays in our lives for the sole reason that we really need to learn to have faith and trust and rely on the Lord. It is an essential lesson to our long-term happiness, and it isn't something that we can ever learn if God grants us every request immediately, or if we don't realize that God will sometimes say no if we ask for things that are unwise. We learn to trust his judgment sometimes as it points out our own misjudgment.
Today, let's work on being patient and not giving up on God, even when things don't happen as quickly as we would like, or exactly the way we wanted them to. Let's wait for the prophet to come down the mountain and listen to what he has to say. :)
Exodus 32:1
This verse is from when Moses was up the mountain communing with the Lord. And, yes, it was a long time, and yes, perhaps the people legitimately thought he was dead. But instead of asking Aaron to talk to God for them, or praying to God themselves, they decided to ask for idols of gold. Gods that can be made weren't really going to work out, and they had so very recently witnessed miracles, but already they are ready to turn back to things they perhaps had gotten used to in Egypt.
Unfortunately, I think we are much the same. We aren't very patient, especially with God. We expect him to snap his fingers and solve all of our problems, and when we don't see that happen overnight, we turn to other objects of worship to fulfill our desires instead. As with the children of Israel in this chapter, it clearly isn't going to work, but we still do it, almost like addicts keep trying to fill internal holes with whatever obsession of choice, even when they/we have already seen that it doesn't actually fill anything more than temporarily, and actually makes the hole bigger..
God didn't send us to earth to be coddled. He loves us, no question, but he loves us enough to teach us to solve our own problems when we can, and to learn some patience and faith... to grow up to be strong and capable. With the Israelites, after this he lets them wander for 40 years in the wilderness before he takes them into the promised land that he was going to give them. He could have saved them a lot of trouble if he had just done it immediately, but what would they have learned? ... Sometimes I think that we get some delays in our lives for the sole reason that we really need to learn to have faith and trust and rely on the Lord. It is an essential lesson to our long-term happiness, and it isn't something that we can ever learn if God grants us every request immediately, or if we don't realize that God will sometimes say no if we ask for things that are unwise. We learn to trust his judgment sometimes as it points out our own misjudgment.
Today, let's work on being patient and not giving up on God, even when things don't happen as quickly as we would like, or exactly the way we wanted them to. Let's wait for the prophet to come down the mountain and listen to what he has to say. :)
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