Eeyore or Tigger?

Numbers 14:1-9

 

 

Who’s your favorite: Eeyore or Tigger?

 

Have you ever noticed that there are two kinds of people in the world? One sees everything as half empty and the other as half full. In Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore is a half empty kind of guy: “It’s not much of a tail but I’m sort of attached to it”. While Tigger is always bouncing around: “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! I almost bounced clear outta the book!”

 

In today’s passage the Israelites are half empty as they respond in despair to the report concerning the Promised Land: “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?” Sort of sounds like Eeyore doesn’t it?

 

While Joshua and Caleb are half full kind of guys: “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us.”  Do you feel like bouncing with Tigger?

 

How did the other ten spies explore the same land as Joshua and Caleb but came to the totally opposite conclusion? The answer is in the last statement in today’s passage. “The Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them”.

 

There are many examples in the Bible of people who believed and trusted that God would be with them in difficult, if not impossible situations. Moses ran away from Egypt and Gideon was hiding in a winepress when God promised each of them, “I will be with you”. The same promise is true for you and me.

 

Eeyore and Tigger are make believe characters from a fictional children’s book, but they have human traits. Traits that can be seen in people throughout the Bible. Traits that we can see in ourselves.

 

Are you more like Eeyore or Tigger? Or a better question to ask is this; do you see God at work in your life or do you only see the obstacles? Like the Israelites, do you ask God why, or like Joshua and Caleb do you ask God why not?

 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%2014%3A1-9&version=NIV;GNT

https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Num.14.1-Num.14.9

 

The God of all Comfort

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.      

I have been watching a series on TV I have found very interesting and good distraction in the evening before going to bed.  It is about a family on a cattle farm in Australia.  They have many struggles and lots of hardship, but they pull together as a family.  When it gets too tough for the family to handle alone they reach out to the neighbors who are almost as close as family.

I am in to season three and have become quite entrenched in the characters and their lives (I do this with books too), but last night was different.  As I watched the family move through a major crisis it struck me how typical they are - no faith in God, in fact God was never mentioned in all three seasons that I can recall. I suspect that is true of the most of the world in which we live.

These new friends of mine face every hardship in life without a God who can carry them, who comforts [us] in all our troubles.  This parallel was troubling for me last night. As life does, a major curve ball was thrown at them when death struck suddenly and from nowhere. There was no one to comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. They were on their own.

I turned the TV off at that point but I couldn't turn my mind off.  It was a long time before I was able to get to sleep. This may sound silly to you, getting so involved in a piece of fiction, a television drama, but the writers of all the programs we view, write from life; often from their own life experiences. There are so many lessons for me from that TV program but for today I am made aware of how truly blessed I am to know Jesus and His love and compassion.  

I know, as you probably do too, from personal experience that life will toss us handfuls of hardship and a pocketful of pain which we have to face. If we had to face them alone, without a God who loves and cares deeply, the pain would be unbearable. It is time we Christians remember why we are here, remember the one person who shared Jesus' love with us and do the same for someone else.

2 Corinthians 1