Moses Does the Arithmetic

Adoniram Judson reached Rangoon in 1813 and worked six years before one Burmese man was baptised. Asked in that stretch what the prospects were, the answer handed down from him was that they were as bright as the promises of God.

Moses had a stretch like that and did his sums. Numbers 11 has the camp weeping in the doors of their tents for the fish they ate in Egypt freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick. Moses has already asked God to kill him and spare him another mile of carrying them. Then God promises meat for a whole month, and Moses answers with a census. The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them?

The reply is one question and one promise. Is the LORD's hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.

Read what he then watched, because this is where the story usually gets stopped. A wind brought quails from the sea and dropped them round the camp two cubits deep, and the people gathered all that day and all that night and all the next day. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people. They buried their dead there and named the place after the craving. The hand was not short. What it delivered was the thing they had demanded in contempt of what they were already being given. Judson's line holds because the promises he banked on were God's own.

Honest arithmetic and wrong conclusions, in that order, is a fair account of Moses on his worst day, and he was not struck down for it. God give you what he has actually promised and spare you what you have been demanding, and put you where you can watch whether his word comes to pass unto you or not.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 103 is No Longer Strangers (Ephesians 2:19).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two