cloud watching

i am currently marching with the israelites thru their three-day-weekend-turned-forty-year-desert holiday. at every turn they are in awe of GOD’s powerful provision of bread, water and safety, and then at every other turn complaining that there’s too much bread, bitter water, and scary egyptians. i find myself thinking: “hey, can’t they see what GOD is doing? are they that stupid?” of all the wandering-trials the israelits go thru, i think boredom would get me faithless fastest. think about it: GOD is up on mt. sinai, moses is up on mt. sinai, joshua is half-way up mt. sinai, the people have spent three days getting scrubbed up for this, and there’s a barricade around the mountain so no one can even touch it. moses and GOD chat for forty days and nites with no word. from our telescopic position we can’t fathom why the israelites would throw together their egyptian-jewelry and build a cow. i mean, come on, a cow! at least they could have been more creative than that right? they inform aaron they want gods that will lead them since moses went and disappeared, and so they choose a cow. (silent shaking of head in disbelief) i love how i can be so smarmy about this from the comfortable place in my warm bedroom by the glow of a new art-deco lamp, and not even hear the herd of cows mooing over my left shoulder. i don’t seem to be getting anything out of my Bible reading (that i spent all of five minutes on), so i follow a cow-christian book instead. i try to pray, but i get so distracted that i give up and listen to my own thots about (off all things!) cows. God doesn’t seem to be answering my prayer of a week ago, and so i decide to “take the bull by the horns” as it were, and manipulate the situation to get my answer. well now it doesn’t seem so far fetched that had i been amongst the israelites, i might have even suggested the cow-idea. am i really all that different from them? doubt it. they hadn’t heard from moses or GOD in forty days. maybe they thot GOD had forgotten them. maybe they thot He had given up on them. maybe they thot He stopped caring and chose a different nation. sound familiar? when it seems like nothing is going on, i am tempted to think i’ve been forgotten, shunned, and maybe even disowned. what the israelites didn’t know was that during those forty days GOD was reavealing to moses exactly how His people could best show other nations His great love for them, and “setting apart” of them (not to mention, they never even noticed the hovering lightening cloud). what i often don’t notice is the passionate patience GOD is developing in me, the promised land faith, and the lightening cloud of peace He offers if i would but see.