When God Gives In

They only cared about pleasing themselves…
And provoked God with their insistent demands.
So He gave them exactly what they asked for—
but with it they got an empty heart.  —Psalm 106:14-15 (The Message)

Psalm 106 is a catalogue of moral failure, summed up in a laconic confession: "We sinned a lot” (106:6).

 Out of this litany of bad behavior, one verse caught my eye: “(God) gave them (Israel) exactly what they asked for, but with it they got an empty heart” (106:15).

The incident the poet had in mind is described in the book of Numbers: “The riff-raff among the people had a craving and soon they had the People of Israel whining, ‘Why can't we have meat? We ate fish in Egypt—and got it free!—to say nothing of the cucumbers and melons, the leeks and onions and garlic. But nothing tastes good out here; all we get is manna, manna, manna’” (11:4-5). 

"Where's the meat?" the people of GOD cried. “Why can’t we go back to Egypt and have the good life we enjoyed there?” (How soon we forget.)

Moses replied, “You want meat do you? Well, God’s going to give you meat. You're going to eat meat, not for a day or two days, or five or ten or twenty days but for a whole month. You're going to eat meat until its coming out of your nose. You're going to be so sick of meat that you'll gag and throw up at the mere sight of it”— which is exactly what happened. (You can read the story for yourself in Numbers 11.)

What's the point? Well, if I want something my Father in Heaven does not want for me—because in His infinite wisdom He knows it would be ruinous—and I want it bad enough, and keep asking for it, He may give it to me, but the result will be emptiness and self-loathing.

 So then, I must be careful about what I want because, in the end, I may not want what I wanted at all. 

God's "giving in" is always redemptive, however, designed to turn us around and give us the truly good life. It was the pig pen, you know, that turned the Prodigal toward home.

 David Roper
10.17.21