Just three days after the people crossed the Red Sea through a miraculous intervention from the Lord, they were grumbling about a lack of fresh water (Exodus 15). Now, just three days after leaving Sinai, they are grumbling again, this time about the food they are eating.

Despite all that God has done for them – miraculous deliverance from the Egyptians, the giving of the Law, provision of fresh water, manna on the ground every morning – despite all of that, this is the extent of their patience and faithfulness: three days.

It begins with grumbling. Presumably the people were going from tent to tent voicing their complaints because this became a widespread problem. We should not under-estimate how serious this sort of behaviour is in God’s sight. The Lord knows that the tongue is a powerful rudder that can steer the whole ship onto the rocks and disaster, so he sends fire on the outskirts of the camp as a warning against this grumbling and complaining.

It is easy, with the benefit of centuries of hindsight, to see why the people’s behaviour was so insulting to the Lord. Their complaint about his miraculous provision of nutritious and plentiful food seems to have amounted to little more than that they were bored with it. They longed for the variety and flavour of Egypt.

We live, today, in a world that offers abundant and sometimes almost overwhelming variety and flavour. We are encouraged, daily, to be who we want to be and do what we want to do, and almost force fed an inescapable diet of glittering advertising promising every kind of fulfilment and excitement. How boring, in contrast, might a life of quiet, daily service to the Lord appear? Yet is in the Lord that the greatest fulfilment is found, and the greatest promise is realised.

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NEWBOLD COMMUNITY CHURCH