We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. Numbers 11:5
When the children of Israel were stuck in the wilderness and the routine set in to affect their mental and emotional wellbeing, they started looking back at times past and wondered how good it would be like to enjoy the “simple pleasures” of Egypt – fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.
Notice how the Holy Spirit prompted Moses (or his scribe) to record these in descending value quantum – fish > cucumber > melon > leek > onion > garlic. In the Israelites’ minds, fish had already cost them “nothing”. And when you move down the value chain, if fish was nothing, then leeks, onions and garlic would really be just as good as perhaps, much diminished in value.
What was troubling was not the way they valued things, but rather, how they saw God’s leading; they diminished God’s work in their lives by pegging their current circumstance to a past blessing. Yes, comparably, the food in Egypt to the manna was definitely better since they had many more options. But to peg what God was doing in their lives at the juncture – having being brought out of bondage, and yet craving for the temporal in the place of slavery, showed their mentality which has now been neatly crafted into the axiom “it is easier to take a person out of Egypt than it is to take Egypt out of a person”.
When God takes you out of the place where He has called you to in times past, one of the things that you should not do is to reference the blessings then and now as a point of comparison. Eccl 3:11 tells us that God makes everything beautiful in their time. In other words, the beauty of the blessings in its season is meant to be beyond compare.
To measure the blessings of a new season and against a scorechart of a previous season is to miss the point of being where God has called you to in this season.
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