Exodus 16:2-15
First Reading for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
When people ask me how I’m doing, I don’t really know what to say. Or at least, I don’t know what to say if I’m being honest. I am not good or fine, but I am certainly not doing poorly either. I wonder if this is a limit of the English language. Other languages like German seem to have these words for the really specific situations that we find ourselves in. For example, waldeinsamkiet is a word for the peace and spiritual stillness that one feels by walking through the woods. I love that. English doesn’t seem to have those kind of words.
I want a succinct way to say, “I am surviving and doing as well as I can in what has been a very challenging season.” It’d be great if there was a word for that. Because when you cue up that mouthful I just wrote out, people aren’t going to ask you how you’re doing again. But that place (whatever you call it) is where I am, where I’ve been, and maybe where I’ll be for awhile.
With that in mind, my ears pricked up during the first reading in church this morning. The Israelites have made it out of Egypt, which is great. Yet they are also now in the wilderness and it is definitely a challenging season. They don’t know how long they’re going to be out there. As most of us are wont to do, the people start complaining. “It would have been better if we had just died in Egypt.” Over dramatic? Yes, but I think we’ve all found ourselves there at some point.
Despite the grumbling, God gives them what they need to survive. God provides quail and manna for the people to eat. Even in this challenging wilderness, the people will eat and they will survive thanks to the grace of God.
I must confess that I can identify with the grumbling. I don't usually grumble out loud because that is not what people-pleasing, oldest children do. But I have struggled with this wilderness season and wondered many times where God is in all of this. My therapist, who is also a man of faith, once shared that in the midst of a difficult season, he came to understand that God does God’s best work in secret. And he’s right. I believe that. I would just also like God to be a little more obvious like in this whole quail and manna scenario.
Yet sitting in church this morning, I remembered that God’s secret work is readily before me if I just have the eyes to see. I want to know that things are going to be okay. I want to know that I am seen and have value. I want to know that what I do has purpose. The truth is in this challenging wilderness, God does provide for those yearnings. There is quail and manna if I truly look around and listen.
It is there in the presence of EA. It is there in my sons telling me that they love me without prompting. It is there when I run into a student or family and see that they’re okay. It is there in listening ears of my parents and siblings. It is there when I get to take a walk and experience waldeinsamkiet. It is there when a student comes into the Community Close at school and his eyes light up when he sees all his color options for a new backpack. It is there when I get to be a cog in a great piece of machinery that helps a student much-needed shoes. It is really everywhere.
This is hard, but I also realize that I am getting to experience a great deal of grace in this and many other things. I sometimes forget and I sometimes grumble. But I am grateful when my eyes are opened to the goodness of God that is around me, has been around me, and will be around me.
So I decided to coin a new word. I don’t know if I’ll actually use it in conversation because they will undoubtedly look at me weird. But I think my invented word is a fun way to capture this feeling of being in the difficulty of a wilderness season but also know that you’re doing as well as you can because you are finding the provisions to survive. That word is quailderness. I’m in the wilderness. It’s difficult, but God is also sending the quail that I need.
