"Shut Up and Eat Your Manna!"

Last night, our family devotion was on Numbers 11:4-9, 31-34. I've posted it here below:

The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, "If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"

7 The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. 8 The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a handmill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into cakes. And it tasted like something made with olive oil. 9 When the dew settled on the camp at night, the manna also came down.

31 Now a wind went out from the LORD and drove quail in from the sea. It brought them ^[c] down all around the camp to about three feet ^[d] above the ground, as far as a day's walk in any direction. 32 All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. ^[e] Then they spread them out all around the camp. 33 But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. 34 Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, ^[f] because there they buried the people who had craved other food.Immediately after out family devotion, which we always do after a sit-down family dinner at home, we got up and began clearing dishes. One of my children (whose name is here changed to protect his less-than-innocence) had the job of doing the dishes. Cedric's job is much easier than it was just a couple of weeks ago, because we recently got a dishwasher. Before we had the dishwasher, this chore was the most dreaded of all the rotated-through chores on the kids' chore chart. Now that we have a dishwasher, it's one of the easiest jobs. Just empty the clean dishes and load up the dirty ones. Pop in some soap and turn it on. What could be more simple?

But poor Cedric! He opened the dishwasher, which still had clean dishes that needed to be unloaded, and sighed a great big sigh! "There are puddles of water on top of the clean glasses!" he said. "I have to DRY them before putting them away!"

I wanted to say, "Shut up and eat your manna!" Instead, I explained how things are so much easier than they used to be, and that instead of complaining, he should be grateful that we have such a nice dishwasher to help us with our work.

Then I thought, "How often to I do the same thing as little Cedric here?" How often do we all complain about our blessings, because they aren't as super-awesome as we might have believed in our imaginations? Why, after all, didn't we get the kind of dishwasher that clears the table, loads itself, washes the dishes, dries them, and puts the clean dishes away? Why, after all, do we have to keep eating this boring old manna, instead of having all the delicacies of Egypt?

Lord forgive us! Make us content, and make us grateful!