TO LACK OR TO ABOUND

Matthew 6:33 
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

There are two main ways the Father uses our finances to teach us: He either withholds them, or punishes us with abundance.

On the second month of their exodus the children of Israel complained about their manna diet. They wanted fresh meat. Our fathers‘ desire for meat made them complain about their blessed situation and look back at Egypt with nostalgia (Exodus 16:3). A year later they did it again (Numbers 11:4) and this time the Father from whom all blessings flow did not take too kindly to it and he addressed the issue by punishing them with abundance.

Abundance is not always a sign of God‘s blessing and approval. Abundance has a tendency to steal our hearts from God. In abundance we spend foolishly, become preoccupied with the things of the world, and find it difficult to dedicate to God in the same proportions as we did before. Avarice and greed are quick to follow and a society that has too much usually becomes fat, lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the needs of others. It seems easier to emanate godliness when things are lean. Maybe that is why many of God‘s children are blessed with leanness.

Whether we live in leanness or abundance, we should never complain. The apostle Paul was a good example of this. When addressing his own situation he said, "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content" (Philippians 4:11). He also taught his disciples to be content with the basics of food and raiment (1Timothy 1:6); housing is not even in the deal. James, the brother of the Master did not hold too much respect for wealth either (James 5:1–6) and the Master himself encouraged us to not worry about our food and raiment but to busy ourselves with the affairs of the Kingdom (Matthew 6:31–34).

May we learn from this lesson from our fathers in the desert and realize that abundance can be a punishment as much as poverty. Poverty usually drives us to desperation and to Hashem; abundance steals our hearts away from he who is the Fountain of everlasting life.

May we not grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer, but remember that these things happened to them as an example, that they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come (1 Corinthians 10:10–11) .

May we pray the wise prayer from King Solomon, Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is ADONAI?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:8–9).

P. Gabriel Lumbroso

"THOU SHALT NOT" ... WHINE.

1 Corinthians 10:11                                                                            Sivan12/ בסיבן יב

These things happened to them as an example . . .

were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

It seems that few things exacerbate the Father more than his people griping and complaining. He can freely set before us the best food ever concocted in the kitchens of heaven, but we will still complain and would rather have the dainties brought by slavery. And why do we complain? There is really nothing wrong with the food Hashem gives us except that, it is not what we want.

Woe unto us and to our evil inclination! This tendency to complain and always wanting more was the basic lusting nature behind the sin in the Garden of Eden. We always seem to want what Hashem in his goodness and wisdom withholds from us, and like today’s manufacturers of goods, the devil is always happy to oblige. The worst of it is that today’s worldly merchants know about our natural bend to whine and gripe and they constantly play on it in order to make a profit. They constantly tell people, “Aren’t you tired of this or that, behold I have the solution that will help you not to have work so hard, be more comfortable, or here is the food that will delight your palate, all for only $ . . . ! How can you live without it?” They make a profit and feed on our complaining nature.

It is so easy to look at the children of Israel in the desert and wonder how they could complain so much, but in reality, we complain as much as they do and about the same things. Food, hard work, leadership, and the sometimes-monotonous daily grind of life seem to be our main areas of complaint. We feel that the way God does things is not good enough. We must improve on his plan for us and make every decision in our lives from the color and consistency of our hair to whether or not to have children. We even want to decide the day of our death and call it Death with Dignity as if Hashem was not able to do that for us. We always think that we deserve more than the simple life our Father would have us live according to his will, so we enslave ourselves to another master: the Master Card! But Yeshua told us that we cannot serve two masters, that we cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24, KJV).

The area of complaint that seems the most destructive in the congregational body of Messiah seems to be each other. Whereas we complain about having to put up with others, we seem to forget that also others have to put up with us. We always feel that people should have learned certain lessons by now so we show ourselves intolerant and impatient. We forget that in the Father’s eyes, we probably should be a bit more advanced ourselves in our spiritual growth and that we only exist by the mercy of his great compassion.

May we learn from the lessons of the children of Israel in the desert and realize that these things happened to them as an example. They were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come (1 Corinthians 10:11).

P. Gabriel Lumbroso