This week Money Magazine named Colorado Springs the best large city (in the US) to live in:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/top100/bigcities.html

Having just moved here about six months ago from Los Angeles, I find it somewhat difficult to see Colorado Springs as a large city. We, of course, love it here and are happy to be here. I am not totally sure what goes into rankings such as these – probably things like housing prices, commute times, air quality, and crime numbers. I know people who live in several of the other cities on the top ten list: Austin, TX (2), Mesa, AZ (3), San Diego, CA (5), and Columbus, OH (8). As far as I know they, are all happy to be where they are, too.

It is easy to be happy with where you live when you live in a great place. Or is it? Simple things like weather can change your mood. The weather here in Colorado is truly bizarre. We had rain every afternoon for over two weeks at the beginning of July. There were puddles of standing water in the backyard because we had so much rain. The last week has been hot – so hot that it is at times difficult to sleep upstairs. Three nights ago, we had our first hailstorm. Most of the hail was small, but we did have some that were about the size of nickels. If you are a person who likes the weather to be constant, Colorado is probably not the place for you. Thankfully, Mandy and I both enjoy the variety.

Landmarks can make people obsessive about where they live. I know people who live in big cities because they love seeing buildings. They say they could never handle a small town. Some people like the beach. That is probably the most frequent thing I heard in LA: “I could never leave the beach.” Personally, I love the mountains. But certainly there is more to life than the weather and the terrain that surrounds us, right?

I was reading this week about the Exodus of the Israelites. The Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians for 430 years. It was a very difficult time for them. In Exodus 2:23-25, the Bible tells of their groaning: …the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel – and God knew.

God heard their cries, and it says, “God knew.” This means that God acknowledged their cries. God then goes about answering their prayer. He sends Moses, who was living out in the desert, to rescue them from Egypt. After ten miraculous plagues, they are set free.

Right before they crossed the Red Sea, the people said this to Moses (Exodus 14:11-12): “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

When you think of cultures that considered their funerary rites important, no culture compares to the ancient Egyptians. To say there were no graves in Egypt is like saying there is no corn in Kansas. The people were clearly being sarcastic to Moses and to God. We can read this and be appalled at their words. But…

Does this not sound like us sometimes? We beg God for something and then when we get it, we complain about it. When that thing we so desperately yearned for does not satisfy us as we thought it would, we groan.

If you were Moses, how would you have responded to the people? I think I would have said something like, “Fine! Go back. Later!”

I appreciate how Moses responded to the people of Israel. In Exodus 14:13-14, Moses said, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Moses had faith in God. Moses trusted God to take care of all these people. Moses was not always so trusting, though. After God heard the cries of the people and talked to Moses through the burning bush, Moses lacked trust.

God explained to Moses how he would speak to the Israelites and become their leader. In Exodus 4:1, Moses says, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’”

God responded by showing Moses how to perform a couple of miracles: converting his staff into a serpent and making his hand be diseased and clean again.

In Exodus 4:10, Moses said, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

God responded by asking Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

In Exodus 4:13, Moses says, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”

Exodus 4:14 says this: Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.

I can see why God was frustrated at Moses. Thankfully, Moses went on to be a great leader – although he occasionally had recurring issues of trusting God. I can see why God was saddened at the constant groaning of the Israelites. It seems that they were rarely content. This discontentment of theirs is a clear sign of their distrust in God.

It is also clear that we are exactly the same way. We are rarely content. This reveals our distrust in God. Do you trust God? Do you really depend on Him? No matter where you are? No matter what landmarks you live near? No matter what the weather is like?

My new motto for life is “Want only what God wants.” Do you want only what God wants for you?

-z

Tags: colorado, exodus, moses

This entry was posted by zac on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 8:45 am and is filed under Weekly Jib Jab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.