Longing for Meat and the Leeks and Garlic of Egypt

Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!”

When Mark and I, with our small children, left Minnesota for Liberia in 1986, I had never been out of the country, much less to the tropics. Being originally a Wisconsin girl and then transplanted to Minnesota, my life had been marked since birth by the dramatic differences of each of the four seasons. 

In Liberia my new life had only two seasons—hot & wet and hot & dry. Six months of each. And so in my first year in Liberia every three months as the new season began in the U.S., I would feel waves of longing. "I'm missing the leaves changing!" "I'm missing the snow!" It just seemed weird and wrong to not have seasons. In fact, Christmas time without snow seemed so unnatural that I actually took down our artificial tree on December 26th, to the chagrin of my family. 

Around the one year anniversary of our arrival in Liberia I had a revelation. It occurred to me that if I were to be completely honest I would admit I had never even liked cold weather one little bit. And yet here I was, in the beautiful tropics, moaning and groaning because I couldn't have it six months a year!  

In Numbers we read that when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, God gave them water from a rock and manna appeared on the ground six days a week. But instead of thanking God for what they had, the Israelites complained about what they didn't have. Meat, leaks, and garlic, to name a few things. They complained and complained and complained. 

And how like the children of Israel I have been! Rather than praising God for what I had, I too have at times been filled with self-pity as I thought about what I didn't have. The children of Israel paid a terrible price for their grumbling. Though God gave them bushels and bushels of quail to eat, He also sent a plague as punishment for their ingratitude. 

I too will pay a price for grumbling. A spirit of entitlement—a spirit always closely followed by self-pity—will, at the very least, cost me my peace and joy. And if I'm not careful I may find myself out of missionary work in the tropics and back in Minnesota! Now that is motivation!

See No Longer Playing the Part of the Martyr.
See The Lowest Servant in the Room.