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Faith-filled or Faithless

In our Bible study, we have been going through the book of 1 Corinthians. One of the debatable passages is found in chapters 12-14 when Paul talks about spiritual gifts. Some believe they ended with the apostles, and still, others believe they continue on today. I am in the latter group. Now before I go on, I would say that miracles are more than spectacular. I believe miracles occur in the mundane and regular.

When you look at the Bible, there are many different miracles, especially involving food. I love food and I love miracles, so I really love food miracles. And while there are multiple food miracles in Scripture, the day God provided quail for meat in the middle of the desert may rank as one of the most amazing. When the Israelites exited Egypt, a quail-storm was definitely not in the forecast.

We read that the people began to complain. They remember the good food they had in Egypt, forgetting that they were slaves. They were tired of eating manna and wanted the days of fresh vegetables and fish. I think many of us can relate especially after eating turkey for a week straight after Thanksgiving or Christmas. The people were tired of eating the same thing. As a meat lover, I understand. Although I have never eaten at a Brazilian steakhouse, the thought of being surrounded by a never-ending supply of proteins sounds appetizing.

Unfortunately, the Israelites were suffering from selective memory. Although they got different food, they seemed to forget that it came at a cost, namely their freedom. And we also need to remember that the Israelites were not just slaves, they had been the victims of genocide. Yet despite that suffering and loss, they missed the meat on the daily menu.

It is interesting and ironic that the Israelites were complaining about one miracle while asking for another one? Their capacity for complaining was simply astounding, and we scoff at the Israelites for grumbling about a meal of manna that was miraculously delivered to their doorsteps every day, but we sometimes do the same thing?

There are miracles all around us all the time, yet it is so easy to find something to complain about in the midst of those miracles. One miracle you are living in right now is the simple act of reading. It involves millions of impulses firing across billions of synapses. While you are reading, your heart goes about its business circulating six litres of blood through over a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres of veins, arteries, and capillaries. And if you think about our planet, it is travelling around one hundred thousand kilometres per hour and spins on its axis around sixteen hundred kilometres an hour. These are “manna” miracles that happen day in and day out and we take them for granted.

Despite the Israelites’ complaining, God patiently responds to their food tantrum with one of the most unfathomable promises in Scripture. He does not just promise a one-course meal of meat; God promises meat for a month. And Moses can hardly believe it. Moses is doing the math in his mind, and it does not add up. Not even close! He is trying to think of any conceivable way that God could fulfill this promise, and he cannot think of a single scenario. He cannot see how God can fulfill His impossible promise for a day, let alone a month. I think we have been there.

You know God wants you to take the job with less security that pays less. It does not add up. You know God wants you to go on the mission trip, but means not going on your holiday with your friends. It does not add up. You know God wants you to get married, or go to grad school, or adopt, but it does not add up.

Just before I went back to school, we had enough money to put a down payment on a house. We actually found a “perfect” house for our family. I had a secure job that if I had stayed at would probably be making three times what I am today. But God seemed to be tugging us in a different direction. I came home from work one day and told my wife, “I am done.” That Fall, we packed up our family and moved to Saskatchewan. On paper and in my mind, it seemed to be a foolish decision. Why give up the job? Why give up the comfort of living on Vancouver Island for the Prairies? But we went and as the cliché goes, “the rest is history.”

For the Israelites wandering in the desert, meat for a month seems like an impossible promise. And Moses has to decide whether or not he is going to believe it. Logic is screaming no; faith is whispering yes. And Moses has to choose between the two.

This predicament reminds me of another food miracle that happened in the Judean wilderness about fifteen hundred years later. A crowd of five thousand is listening to Jesus speak. He does not want to send them away hungry, but their food was not available in that area. Then a nameless boy offers his bag lunch of five loaves and two fish to Jesus. For the outside observer, it seems like a nice gesture, but Andrew verbalizes what all the other disciples must have been thinking: “How far will they go among so many?” Like Moses, Andrew starts doing the math in his head and it does not add up.

On paper, 5+2 does not equal 5000, but if you add God into the equation, all things are possible. When you give what you have to God, He multiplies it so that 5 + 2=5,000. This happens only in God’s economy! The twelve baskets of remainders mean the most accurate equation is this: 5 + 2=5,000 and more. If you put what little you have in your hand into the hand of God, it may not add up in our minds but God can multiply it.

Do you remember what Jesus did right before the miracle? It says Jesus “gave thanks.” He did not wait until after the miracle; He thanked God for the miracle before the miracle happened. How could He do that? He knew His Father would keep His promise. He did not just pray for the miracle, He praised God because He knew God would come through.

So do we have this kind of faith? Do we trust God to follow through in accordance to His Word and promises? Do we believe God is still the God of miracles? The Bible says in Hebrews 13:8 that, “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.” If God can provide quail to a hungry nation in the past, He can, according to Philippians 4:19, “meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

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