Exodus 17: 1-7 (links validated 2/22/23)

Have you ever forgotten to eat? It’s a strange question – how can you forget to eat? Recently a bride and groom shared how that happened to them. After all the catering places they had visited and debates over the menu they had, when it came to the actual Wedding day, they had forgotten to eat. Between taking pictures, greeting their over 250 guests, toasts, dancing, and more pictures, the whole celebration and feast just flew by. So much so that it didn’t even register to them till the next day when their friends were commenting on how much they enjoyed the cocktail hour and how great the dinner was the couple looked at each other and realized neither one of them had a chance to eat themselves. That recently wedded couple is far from the first who found that in the excitement of the Wedding day those normal human urges could get lost. It is true on the other emotional extreme as well – when people suffer a loss, are grieving and mourning, sometimes that experience is so consuming they have to be reminded “you need to eat.” It is even true that people can sometimes get so engulfed in a project or task that they are working on that this very human need gets eclipsed...

Nobody likes to receive another person’s complaints and for most of us, complaining is not a pleasant activity. Some of us would rather put up with certain things than gather up the courage to complain. Other people whom we encounter, however, seem to have a hair trigger complaint mechanism. Some of us, for instance, could not imagine sending a plate of food back to the kitchen at a restaurant. In a classic episode of The Bob Newhart Show Bob receives a steak at a restaurant that is more than a little on the cold side. His wife says “Send it back” but Bob insists it’s fine. When the waiter asks how everything is, Bob says “Oh, just fine” even though moments later he can be seen holding his plate over the candle on the table! Others have no hesitation and can be rather vocal about it, often leading to discomfort for that person’s dining companions. Recently a story about a certain late night comedian and his wife went viral when an egg white omelet was delivered to the table with a speck—and apparently a really small speck—of egg yolk in it. The vitriol involved in the subsequent complaint to the waiter and kitchen seemed to most people way out of proportion to the culinary goof at hand...

Don't forget to remember you're never alone No matter if you are up high or down low And as sure as the sun will keep rising above Don't forget to remember that you're dearly loved...

After Anand Malligavad tumbled into a lake, he thought he might die, not from drowning but from the stench. Like hundreds of other lakes in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, the one Mr. Malligavad suddenly found himself in was a receptacle for sewage, plastic debris, and construction waste. His unplanned dip happened in 2017 when Mr. Malligavad, a mechanical engineer, was strolling with friends near his office. Walking back home, he smelled so bad that a guard refused him entry into his residential enclave. The next day, Mr. Malligavad made an unlikely pitch to his company: He would restore the 36-acre lake if it funded the project...

Maybe this tired analogy will help us to see God’s law as a gift of life. What if you were to buy an expensive new car without ever consulting its owner’s manual? You’d probably quickly “kill” that car. After all, even if you figured out how to insert the key in its ignition, you might turn the key so long you’d destroy the starter. Or you might make an “x” instead of an “h” out of its stick shift, reducing your transmission to smoking rubble. Without consulting its owner’s manual, you might simply drive the car without adding any gasoline until you ran out of it along the side of the road. Or you might never add any oil, again reducing you car to a smoking heap of worthless metal.

I like watching nature programs like Planet Earth and Planet Earth II. When the programs focus on deserts, you will be exposed to animals searching for water. Perhaps you will watch as a troop of elephants cross foreboding desert sands in search of an elusive watering hole. A wide shot from the air reveals nothing but sand in all directions, but the troop marches on. Most likely this troop will include at one least one calf struggling to keep up, its only hope of survival being the discovery of that water hole. You want to root for that calf to make it, but that’s not always the way things end.

Nelson Mandela was a young lawyer in South Africa committed to justice. His faith and commitment led him to help organize against the racist white nationalist government of that nation. Arrested and jailed several times, he was ultimately imprisoned on the notorious Robben Island prison in 1962. For the next 27 years, he was held by the brutal regime. Somewhere in that time, somehow in that place, he sustained his own original vision of equality. Imprisonment became a wilderness from which he emerged committed not only to human rights for his supporters but for all. As South Africa’s apartheid regime dissolved, it was Mandela who prevented a racial civil war and who invented the Truth and Reconciliation commissions that found a way between revenge and ignoring guilt...

I am reminded of a movie called 127 Hours. In April 2003, avid mountaineer Aron Ralston went hiking in Utah. He did not tell anyone where he was going. He befriends fellow hikers Kristi and Megan and shows them an underground pool before they head home. After they part ways, Aron continues through a slot canyon. While climbing, he loses his grip and falls, knocking a boulder that traps his right hand and wrist against the wall. He attempts to move the boulder, but it won't budge. He calls frantically for help but realizes that he is alone. He shortly begins recording a video diary using his camcorder to maintain morale as he chips away parts of the boulder with a pocket knife. So, over the next five days, Aron rations his food and the remaining supply of water and is forced to drink his urine. He also sets up a pulley using his climbing rope in a futile attempt to lift the boulder. Throughout the days, Aron becomes desperate and depressed and begins hallucinating about escape, relationships, and past experiences, including his former girlfriend, Rana, and his family. During one hallucination, Aron realizes that his mistake was that he did not tell anyone where he was going or for how long, and decides that destiny has trapped him with the boulder. On the sixth day, Aron has a vision of his future son, spurring his will to survive...

("Exodus 17 may well be claiming that the laws of God are every much a blessing as streams of water in a parched and hot place. But neither the Israelites nor contemporary people see things quite that way, do they!? When was the last time you heard someone pray something along the lines of, 'O Lord God, if you truly love me and want to reveal yourself to me, send me some rules to follow!'...")

("When I was in Kindergarten, I remember going trick-or-treating on Halloween. At most of our neighbors' houses there in Alger Heights I got exactly what you would expect: candy bars, suckers, milk duds, and M&M's. But I vividly recall the one house we went to. This man was very well-meaning but ultimately highly disappointing to a 6-year-old...")

In the movie Beyond Rangoon, Dr Laura Bowman becomes severely depressed after the brutal murder of her son and husband and she loses her interest in life. Family members urge her to take a vacation and she decides on Burma...

As I pondered the meaning of Israel’s testing of God, it occurred to me that we have an almost exact parallel in the current coronavirus pandemic. As people suffer in fear, we hear little mention of God. Most people seem to be putting their trust in science and politics, that is, in human efforts to meet human need. And because the need doesn’t go away, people are grumbling about and quarreling with their human leaders, on both sides of the aisle, in both science and politics. “Why did Trump do this? Why didn’t the Democrats do that? If you don’t do something, we are all going to die out here in the wilderness.” Even believers join in this incessant chorus of negativity, instead of calling out to God. Are we testing God by thinking and acting as though he is not among us? Or is God testing us, to see if we will trust him even though it seems as though he has forsaken us to this virus? Will we only believe when we see a cure? Or will be believe and then see God among us?

The titanic battle of the wills that has brought misery to the human race is played out in billions of merely human scenarios- the 3 year old stubbornly sitting at the table long after the family meal is done, because she will not eat those slimy lima beans; the 13 year old throwing a tantrum over restrictions on screen time; the young couple steaming in silence after yet another argument about sex; the life-long prodigal son refusing to come home to God because it would mean submitting to authority; the Rat Pack singer defiantly crooning, “I did it my way!” Of course, with competing human wills, the issue isn’t as simple. But submitting to God’s will is simply the way to peace and life. Why won’t we do it? Because we’re not convinced that God is unalterably “for us.” As Satan insinuated, God is out to keep you from becoming as happy as God.

Mr. Data on the Starship Enterprise emits a little giggle. This is inappropriate and unexpected from an artificial life form. Jean Luc Picard, the captain, orders him to begin a “self-diagnostic”. This is a part of Data’s programming which will find and correct anything which does not fit correctly into the expectations for him. Data finds the errant chip of information and the problem is solved. Data had been endowed by his creator with the ability to perform such a function. You probably see where I am going with this. Our Lenten procession is also a self-diagnosis.

Thomas Merton’s prayer seems appropriate for the Israelite wanderers and us who join them: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you.

In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Brooks, an older inmate who had been imprisoned for much of his adult life, is finally, and surprisingly, paroled. In some of the most poignant scenes of the movie, we watch him try to adjust to life outside of prison: find a place to live, get a job, and make his own meals. His life had been so shaped by the routine of prison for so many years that he found the world outside those walls too much for him to handle. Now, at an older age, he becomes lost and disoriented by the experience of freedom and finds the adjustment too difficult to make. In the end, unable to find any way to embrace his life of freedom, he takes his own life as the only relief from the profound disorientation arising from being disconnected from the people and routines that, for better or worse, gave his life shape and meaning.

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