ANYONE who’s seen the classic Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, ‘Ten Commandments’ will relate to what I’m going to portray; the torture, the whipping, the cruelty, the bullying that the Israelites were undergoing under the hands of the Egyptians, till a prince named Moses, rescued them, with God’s help, and took them away from all that oppression.
But all that the children of Israel did, was complain of those, ‘wonderful’ times, being slaves! All this while God, gave them veg and non-veg to eat, and even as God gave them spring water from a rock. Till God, decided that what they needed was ‘forty years in the wilderness’ Forty years when God just wanted His people to be alone with Him. I believe that’s what’s happening to us today, maybe, and I can’t be sure about that, maybe it won’t be forty years, it maybe just a year or two, when He above just wants you to be alone with Him!
And yet we complain: “Lord,” cried the people who were being fed day and night, “We miss our homes in Egypt!” “Lord!” we shout, “We miss traffic jams and the heartburn we suffered everyday as we tried to get to office in time!”
“God!” cried the Jews as they followed the pillar of fire by day, and the cloud by night, “God,” cried the Jews, even as they knew that the fire and the cloud, showed that God was moving with them everyday, right in their midst, “We miss the whip that tore our flesh when we worked slower!”
“God,” we cry even as we work from home, “We miss the office politics, having our bosses look over our shoulders, and criticizing us for always walking to the coffee machine!” For four hundred years the Jews had lived in the land of the Egyptians, longing for the land God had promised for them, and all they did, as God took them there, was complain. For all our working days, we have longed for days when we could put up our legs at home, and now when we can, we long for the days when our feet were weary! They saw the parting of the Red Sea, and yet they did not believe. We see miracles everyday, in small and big incidents, even being alive in this pandemic, and yet we do not believe!
Let us think of this lockdown as one when God is saying, “Get closer to me, learn about me, so that when this pandemic ends, you will be known as my child! Let’s get to know one another!” You may not get forty years like the Israelites got, so spend every moment with Him, instead of talking of the old wonderful world, because it wasn’t so very wonderful, but can be, after this small ‘wandering stint’ with God..!
