Grumbling

Sheep may be cute and cuddly at a distance, but up close and personal they’re smelly, stupid, stubborn beasts. 

I came home one evening angry and muttering under my breath after spending a half-hour trying to untangle an old ewe from the brambles along our creek, bearing scratches and bruises where she had kicked me in her panic. I was not feeling like a good shepherd.

My father greeted my grumbling with a baleful look and a word of wisdom: "Do it, or don't do it, but don't complain.”

Paul broaches this subject in his first letter to the church in Corinth: "(Let us not) complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer" (1 Corinthians 10:10). 

Here he references the judgment of Korah and his kin who complained about Moses' leadership and were swallowed up in a gigantic earthquake (Numbers 16). The point? Complaining is serious sin. 

Complaining creates a toxic environment that poisons everyone and everything in the vicinity. It makes for an especially uncomfortable and inhospitable home. Samuel Johnson said, "To hear complaints is tiresome—to the miserable and the happy."

But more important, a complaining spirit demonstrates that I’m unwilling to accept God's "good, acceptable and perfect will.”  To grumble about my circumstances is to grumble against God and what he deems best for me. 

It’s much better to give thanks. 

David Roper

8.7.20