Does this sound like you? If you want to be brave, ask your friends first!

Whether this sounds like you or not, the litany of complaints above does sound like the people in the first reading today who had grown tired of their circumstances and their leader, Moses. To paraphrase them: “It’s hot in this desert, we’re thirsty, Moses is an idiot, Egypt wasn’t so bad, and is God in our midst or not?”

It is one thing to express legitimate concerns for legitimate reasons but some of us Christians are chronic complainers who spare no opportunity to voice our dissatisfaction about anything and everything at any time to anyone who is willing to listen. So, where is your trust?

“God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us!” (2nd Rdg) Have we so quickly forgotten what God has done for us? “We have been justified by faith.” To forget this, we become just another disappointed voice blaming God for all of our problems and taking the credit for all of our blessings.

Oh, “If you but knew the gift of God!” Jesus said to the Samaritan woman. If you knew, you’d drop your bucket of complaints and tell everyone about the man who knows everything YOU have ever done ~ and loves you just the same! Will you trust that he’d never forsake you? That he would never abandon you in the desert of fear, despair and loneliness? Will you trust?