To complain is to ask God why he’s not giving water in the desert and plead for him to provide; to grumble is to say there’s not water because God doesn’t care. The first seeks to obtain something. The other seeks only to destroy. In Philippians 2:14, Paul commands the people not to grumble but also not to dispute. Grumbling rarely disputes anyone’s decisions. It doesn’t rise that high. It lays low in the water, like the roar of a wave that comes crashing all around.

So, how’s your quarantine going?

Isn’t it wonderful? We can’t go anywhere. We can’t do anything. All our plans are canceled. Maybe you can work from home like me, but I find it just makes my house unbearable at times. My kids are stir-crazy and I’m ready to get back to normal.

Normal. Remember those good old days? Like when we went to restaurants and sporting events and concerts. We had all we needed. But now? Look at us now. We’re basically prisoners! And for what? A virus? Come on!

Whose fault is this anyway? Surely, “they” could’ve stopped this. It didn’t have to be this bad. But they’re a bunch of failures. We always knew it, didn’t we? Can’t get anything right on a normal day, and when crisis knocks on the door, well, there goes our lives.

A Long Line of Grumblers

If walls could talk, would they, like a child, repeat the echoes of your grumbling? Mine would. I’m an expert grumbler. It’s too cold in winter and too hot in summer. The food was good but the service was slow. The night was long but sleep was short. Nothing is ever just right. Has it ever been? Reading the Bible, it appears my disposition isn’t mine alone. We come from a long line of grumblers.

Perhaps nowhere in the Bible is this clearer than in the story of Israel’s wanderings during the Exodus from Egypt. While isolated in the desert, God’s people quarreled with Moses because there was no water to drink—admittedly a big problem in the middle of the desert (Ex. 17:1–2). Moses responded by asking, “‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses” (Ex. 17:3).

This was hardly their first go at grumbling. By chapter 17, they’ve been at it for a solid two months as they entered the Desert of Sin (Ex. 15:24; 16:2, 7–9, 12). Yes, God led them out of slavery in Egypt but their nomadic desert life didn’t satisfy their appetites. Oh, remember the meat pots and fullness of bread in Egypt! Better to die there with full bellies and no freedoms than in deliverance with empty stomachs! Does God know what he’s doing?

The middle chapters of Exodus (15–17) are a master class in the art of grumbling. Paul said, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction” (Rom. 15:4).

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