Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 244 · September 1
They Soon Forgat
“They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel:”
When you hear the story of Israel in the wilderness told quickly, it sounds like a lesson in other people's foolishness. They walked through a sea on dry ground, and they watched an army drown behind them. They sang about it. Yet three days later, when the water at Marah was bitter, they were complaining. The easy thing is to look down on them, and most of us do. While we are doing it, it even feels like wisdom.
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 treats the same story the same way when he says these things "are written for our admonition." So we are in this story too, and it costs something to admit it. Each of us has been carried through something we promised we would never stop talking about. Then we did stop, and we cannot even say when it happened.
Today's verse has two halves: "They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel." The line just before it is the singing: "Then believed they his words; they sang his praise." Only one verse of praise stands between the sea and the forgetting. The second half of the verse is about impatience, and that is the part we tend to excuse. The next lines say they "lusted exceedingly in the wilderness," and then, "he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul." They got what they asked for, and in the same sentence they wasted away. A few verses later, "They made a calf in Horeb," because Moses was slow coming down the mountain. We do the same when we rush ahead with what we have already decided and call it faith.
Father, we forget faster than we rebel, and the forgetting is where the rebelling starts. We confess it, and we thank You for what the psalm keeps coming back to, what You do after each fall: "Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry: And he remembered for them his covenant." What has held our lives together was never our remembering. It was Yours, and You still remember Your promises when we have forgotten Your works.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 244 is The Lord is Faithful (2 Thessalonians 3:3).