Numbers 21 | Wayfarer

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
Numbers 21:4-5 (NIV)

Wendy and finally returned last night from what was supposed to have been a six-day trip that began with a client event and ended with a visit to see our kids and granddaughter in South Carolina. What it became is eight days of the worst air travel I’ve experienced in over 30 years of regular business travel.

I’ll spare you the details (and there are many, many details) but United Airlines delayed or cancelled almost every flight we were on. They chose not to put our luggage on the plane from Chicago to North Carolina for weight reasons, but then couldn’t get us our luggage for over two days, which meant we didn’t have our materials for the client event. We had to shop for clothes and necessities for over two days. Our return flight was cancelled and it took over two days for them to get us home. At one point, Wendy said to me, “They’ve completely broken me. I have no more emotional energy to even care.”

It is good to finally be home, but you can imagine that we’re still stinging from our travel week from hell. So, when in today’s chapter the Hebrew tribes grow “impatient” and begin to complain, I feel their pain.

One of the things that has become obvious to me in our current chapter-a-day trek through Numbers is that the events recorded are not random coincidence. Everything is connected to each other. We just had the death of Aaron and Miriam, two of the trinity of sibling leaders of the tribes. As happens when a family experiences the loss of a patriarch or matriarch, there was gathering, grieving, and remembering. It brings family together. There is connection, camaraderie, and commitments made.

The very next thing that happens is a tragic and unexpected attack from a Canaanite king. The Hebrews handle this appropriately. They unify, go to God for direction, and follow the Lord’s command. They are victorious.

But how quickly the afterglow of the unity of grief and the victory over the king of Arad lasts. It doesn’t take long for the people to grow impatient, complain, and grow angry. Their complaint to Moses is strong and bitter. They call the manna God has been providing “detestable.” Scholars have noted that this is spiritually equal to rejecting God’s grace. Their impatience and anger lead them past complaining to the point of rejecting both God and Moses. They’re broken.

What happens next is a critically important moment in the entire Great Story. Venomous snakes invade the Hebrew camp and start biting people. Now what are snakes and their venom metaphorical for in the context of the Great Story going back to the Garden? Yep, the evil one and his death dealing lies. God does something strange. He has Moses make bronze snake, put it on a pole and lift it up. Anyone who looks at the snake on the pole is healed from their deadly snake bites. They live.

Fast forward thousands of years to a clandestine meeting in the late watches of the night between Jesus and member of the Hebrew leaders named Nicodemus. Jesus tells Nick, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (John 3:14-15 NIV) Jesus, on the cross, took upon Himself the sin of the world. As Paul put it to the believers in Corinth: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.” Jesus was the ultimate snake on a pole, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV).

What happens through the rest of the chapter? After they look at the snake and are healed, the Hebrew tribes go on winning streak like they’ve never experienced before. Blessing, favor, victory.

So, in the quiet this morning I look back to tremendously trying week. Our client event was great despite the fact that we were wearing clothes hastily purchased on a late-night Walmart run. We felt beaten down by a system we didn’t control. We were just small anonymous cogs stuck in the depths of United’s global operations. Yet, even in the midst of our impatience, anger, and frustration Wendy and I took time to initiate the chain reaction of praise. We stopped our bitching for a moment, in prayer we looked up to Jesus – the snake on the stick – and we offered praise in the midst of our pain.

There were no miracles. But, our prayer and praise helped us endure, it pushed us to have faith and persevere, and yesterday afternoon we finally returned home. Now, our week of travel hell will fade into memory. Forgetting what lies behind, keeping our eyes on Jesus, we press on into the good things God has for us.

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They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way;
Numbers 21:4 (NIV)

My maternal grandfather, Claude Hendrickson had a particularly difficult childhood. Grandpa Spec’s father committed suicide after learning he had tuberculosis. It was assumed that Perry Hendrickson wanted to spare his family the medical costs and difficulties associated with a long, terminal illness. My grandfather, the eldest of three siblings, was farmed out to his maternal grandparents to be raised. His mother retained custody of the younger siblings.

“Spec,” as he was known this whole life, experienced a strict upbringing with his grandparents. There was, however, discipline and faith. He managed well, got married, worked hard, and made a decent life for his family. Meanwhile, his siblings suffered their own difficulties as their mother, Olive Hendrickson, went through a string of failed marriages. Spec’s brother Ralph, an alcoholic, came looking for a job from his older brother. Spec agreed to hire his brother, but explained that he would fire him the first time he found his brother drinking on the job. When that eventually happened, Ralph was fired and promptly returned family in Illinois where he spread malicious lies about Spec among the family there. Spec felt ostracized by much of his family from that point on.

Spec and Ralph remained estranged, yet when Ralph died Spec drove to Illinois to pay his respects and to face a family who thought the worst of him because of Ralph’s malicious stories. Imagine my grandfather’s horror when the funeral director handed him the bill for his brother’s funeral. As “next of kin” the family expected him to pay the bill for his estranged brother who had caused him so much trouble. My grandfather paid the bill, returned home to Iowa, and let it go.

“Family is family,” I can hear my grandfather say from his rocker, chewing on a cigar.

This story came to mind as I read today’s chapter. There is a subtle, recurring theme through the story of the wilderness wanderings of the Hebrews. It appears again today when the nomad nation takes a circuitous route to avoid the land of Edom. Skirting Edom to the east meant living in an extremely desolate area east of the Dead Sea.

Back in Deuteronomy God had told Moses to leave Edom alone because the land of Edom had been settled by Esau, the twin brother of Jacob (aka Israel). The story of the twins is back in Genesis 25. Esau had been Jacob’s older twin, but Jacob had deceived Esau into giving him his birthright. The result was “bad blood” between the brothers and their descendants.

It has been some 600 years since the days of Jacob and Esau, and now the nation of Israelites are living in a desolate desert wilderness clawing out their survival because God had ordered, through Moses, that they leave Esau’s land alone. The people weren’t happy.

“Family is family.” There has always been an unwritten human principle about being faithful to family, to provide for family, to be true to family. In my life journey I believe I’ve seen the power of this sentiment slowly fade in our culture as families spread out over larger and larger geographical areas. Yet, I’m not sure it will ever fade completely. There’s something that’s built in our DNA. It’s why millions of people are doing DNA tests and searching out their roots to understand who their family is and “where I come from.” There is a part of us and our life journey that we realize is only understood in the context of the family from which we spring.

This morning I’m thinking about our human family and the things that connect us. I continue to marvel that modern genetics has definitively shown that all of us descend from what scientists refer to as “Genetic Eve.” We are all part of the same human family. Like the Hebrews, over time we feel less and less connection. Despite the fact that God reminded the Hebrews that the Edomites were “family” they didn’t think of the Edomites in those terms. They saw their distant cousins as enemies who refused to allow them to pass through the land. The Edomites didn’t see the Hebrews as distant cousins but as a threat to their very existence. Along the way our self-centered fears and desires turns human family members into mortal enemies.

Then there are those like Grandpa Spec. Despite having every reason to save his money and walk away angry from his brother’s funeral, he simply paid the funeral bill and let it go.

Family is family.

Indeed.