Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When All You Can Do is Grumble, God Still Listens

{31 Days to an Authentic You resumes tomorrow.}

I heave a great sigh of despair as we round the top of the hill. Standing with my hands on my hips, the straps of the heavy backpack searing into my shoulders, rivulets of salty sweat caking my face from my temples to my jaw, I gaze at the landscape in front of me. One false summit rolls into the next. Our destination – a rustic campsite tucked into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park – is nowhere to be seen as the land stretches endlessly ahead of us.

There we are, just the two of us in the midst of one of the most spectacularly awesome landscapes in the country, and all I can do is plod forward, head down, grumbling every step of the way.

Brad hikes five paces ahead of me as I lob one complaint after another at his back. It’s too hot. My pack is too heavy. My feet are throbbing. My head is throbbing. My eyelids are sweating. I can’t take it. I’m not going to make it. And for the love of the land, please tell me we are going to reach the campsite sometime in this millennium.

Finally, Brad spins around to face me in the middle of the trail. “You need to stop complaining,” he tells me, in no uncertain terms. And can you blame him, really? Instead of the sweet sounds of twittering birds and wind in the trees, all he’s heard for six straight miles is a barrage of bitter lament. He’s had enough.

In the text we read this week, the word “grumble” is repeated seven times in 17 verses. It’s mentioned so many times, in fact, you can’t not notice it.

Stuck in desolate wilderness, hungry, thirsty, exhausted and frustrated, the Israelites are fed up. They are done. And so they complain. They grumble. They lament. To Moses and Aaron and God and frankly, to anyone who will listen. The Israelites even go so far as to declare they’d been better off as slaves in Egypt. At least then, they argue, they’d had plenty of food to eat.

I get where the crabby Israelites are coming from. I hear their anger and frustration, their hopelessness and despair. Heck, I grumbled just as bitterly while on vacation in Yellowstone National Park, for heaven’s sake. I have no doubt: had I been part of the exodus out of Egypt, I would have been leading the chorus of complaints among the Israelites.

I suspect God may have felt a little bit like Brad when the Israelites wouldn’t stop complaining in the wilderness. I suspect God had had it up to his eyeballs with their grumbling. Yet look how he responds to his people:

The Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’” (Exodus 16:11)

God hears their grumbling.

Instead of telling them to quit acting like a bunch of whiny ingrates, God hears them, listens to them and responds to their complaints with an act of grace and mercy.

Instead of chastising them for their ingratitude and lack of trust, he graciously answers their grumbling call. God uses the Israelite’s moment of weakness not as an opportunity to punish them, but as an opportunity to demonstrate his omnipotence and to reinstill their trust.

Grumbling is not ideal. I know there are certainly better ways to communicate with God. Yet these verses tell me that God listens even to our less-than-ideal attempts at communication. God hears us, even when we complain. God hears us when we cry out to him, even when our words are laced with anger and bitterness. He listens when we lament – even when we’ve lost heart and faith. Even when we our trust in him falters.

God always, always listens.

Questions for Reflection:
Do you ever complain to God? Do you feel guilty about your grumbling? Do you think God accepts our complaints as a legitimate form of communication? 

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