Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 244 · September 1
They Soon Forgat
“They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel:”
Told quickly, the wilderness generation reads like a case study in other people's stupidity. They walked through a sea on dry ground, watched an army drown behind them, sang about it, and were complaining inside the month. Contempt is the first thing available here and we take it, and it passes for discernment the whole time we are holding it.
Psalm 106 shuts that door before it opens. Before it tells the story it puts the singer inside it: we have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. Paul handles the same material the same way: they are written for our admonition. So we are in it, and this is what being in it costs to admit. We have been carried through something we swore we would never stop talking about, and we stopped, and we cannot name the week we stopped.
Then the verse, and it has two halves. They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel. The line before it is the singing: then believed they his words; they sang his praise. One verse of worship stands between the sea and the forgetting. The second half is impatience, and it is the half we defend. They made a calf in Horeb because a man was late coming down a mountain. We move because we have already decided, and we call the deciding faith. Then: he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. The request granted and the judgment arrive in the same sentence.
We forget faster than we rebel, Father, and the forgetting is where the rebelling starts. Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry: and he remembered for them his covenant. The remembering that has held all of it together was never ours to do.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 244 is The Lord is Faithful (2 Thessalonians 3:3).