Day 60

This is one of those days when I cringed at reading about someone being stoned to death because he gathered wood on the Sabbath and thought it was too harsh. But then again, there were rules. I only wonder why God didn’t choose to be merciful in that circumstance and instead said the man should be stoned to death. It made me wonder how life was back then because it seemed the penalty for every ‘little’ thing was death. How did the people really feel stoning their fellow humans? What was the value of life back then?

Someone had mentioned that the Israelites kept behaving like toddlers, and God had to teach them a lesson from time to time. Death? I don’t know…

Beyond the above is the effect of the negative report given to the Israelites on Canaan. It sent them into a panic mood, and they again remembered Egypt. In fact, they wanted to kill Joshua and Caleb for having a different perspective on what they saw. God was angry, threatened to kill them, Moses intercedes again, and God vowed that the Israelites, 20 and above, won’t see the land, except for Joshua and Caleb. That’s how the Israelites became wanderers in the desert.

This applies to us today in the sense that once we believe and accept a negative report, it totally determines the way we think, and our thoughts determine feelings and, consequently, our actions. Once we begin to act from a place of negativity, we would find ourselves going round in circles or even regressing. We must trace our feelings back to our thoughts and try to see what we have let in. And a lot of the things we let in our influenced by what we watch, social media, what we read… so many distractions. It is one of the reasons I go on a phone fast from time to time.

Psalm 90 — Verse 3 jumped out to me the most — teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Given the events that had happened so far this Numbers 15, the Israelites didn’t seem to be growing. They kept acting like spoilt kids, despite all God had shown them. He had many things to earn their trust through the years, from bringing them out of Egypt to the point where they were, but still, they didn’t believe him. If they were thinking deeply enough, they would know that he is faithful to see them through. As I reflect on different areas of my life, I pray that God opens my eyes to where I am not applying wisdom.