In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing…let your lives shine brightly before [a dark world full of crooked and perverse people].

But the people grew impatient along the way, and they began to murmur against God and Moses.  “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?…There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink.  And we hate this wretched manna!”

“I am the bread of life.  No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again.  Those who believe in me will never thirst.”–JESUS 

Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days…

…they tested the LORD saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”

Be even more careful to put into action God’s saving work in your lives, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.  For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.—Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!  For He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Phil.2:14,15 NLT; Num.21:4,5 NLT; Jn.6:35 NLT; Deut.30:19-20 ESV; Ex.17:7 NIV; Phil.2:12,13 NLT; I Cor.10:11 ESV; Ps.95:6,7 NLT

Did they not know that when they spurned the manna they were spurning the Lord Himself?  Did they not see that when they rebelled against their hard circumstances they were rejecting their Good Shepherd?  Could they not see beyond their discomfort to the promise of a good land to come?

Can we not see? Do we dare grumble?

–LS