Treasures of Egypt

“…the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.  But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!’”  --Numbers 11:4-6

 I had been plagued with this strange feeling of longing and sadness for awhile.  It would strike me at the oddest times.  For example, I would be watching television and a car commercial would come on.  While I watched the passing scenery as the car drove down the road, the feeling would wash over me.  It had nothing to do with a desire to own a new car. I’ve never cared much about what I drive.  If it starts and goes, it’s ok with me.  I couldn’t explain this feeling, even to myself.  Or, during a meal in a restaurant, I might glance across the room and see a family sitting at a nearby table and I would get an intense emotional pang.

                I tried to analyze the feeling.  It was a yearning for something that I just couldn’t put my finger on.  An advertisement for some vacation getaway could trigger it; or a sunny day with birds singing.  As time passed and the feelings continued to strike me, I considered that I might be depressed, but that didn’t really ring true.  It happened frequently enough, though, that I even pondered the idea of some hormonal imbalance.           

I began praying for insight and one day I realized that the feeling seemed to be nostalgia more than anything else.   I thought maybe it was empty nest syndrome, but even though my children were grown and out of the house, I was in touch with each one of them frequently and they had been gone for awhile by then.  If it was nostalgia, what was I nostalgic for?

I thought back over my life to see if there was any particular time period that I yearned to return to, but, to be honest, there wasn’t. There had been many treasured moments, but as far as a stage I might want to live over again, not a one.  I couldn’t even say it was a longing for my lost youth.  I was in good health and really didn’t feel much different than I had when I was twenty or even thirty years younger.

I seemed to be suffering from generalized nostalgia with no particular object.  Then, slowly, tiny revelation by tiny revelation, God began to show me what it was.  It was nostalgia for all of the things I had expected from the world and had never received; all of the illusory promises of this life that were never quite as I had dreamed or hoped they would be; Nostalgia for what was supposed to be and never was.  Yet, how could someone be nostalgic for something that never was?

In the scripture above, the Israelites were nostalgic.  On their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land God had provided for their every need, including what scripture refers to as the grain of heaven – manna.  Manna wasn’t earthly food.  It didn’t grow in the ground or on a tree or bush.  It was food that God created and gave to them daily. It was a thin white wafer that looked like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey and olive oil.  Imagine, heavenly food prepared by God himself!

But, after awhile, the Israelites got tired of what God was giving them; they grew tired of the hardships of the journey, and they became nostalgic.  They fondly remembered sitting around eating all they wanted of the free pots of meat or fish cooked with leeks, onions and garlic, with sides of cucumbers and melons; somehow forgetting that they had been slaves doing forced labor during that time!  They were nostalgic for what had never been and convinced themselves that the pleasures of Egypt were better than what God was providing for them on the journey to the Promised Land, and would gladly have gone back if they had been given the chance.

If I was offered the opportunity to go back in time and have all of my earthly dreams fulfilled versus eating God’s provision of daily bread and water for my journey to the Promised Land – bread that  sometimes includes the “bread of adversity” and water that is sometimes the “water of affliction” (Isaiah 30:20)—would I go? I would like to think I would decline.  But there is no such offer, because the promises of this world are illusions. Even the earthly dreams that are fulfilled leave us unsatisfied; empty. The pleasures of this world are meant primarily for the enjoyment of the people who belong to this world.

I still experience those pangs from time to time, but I recognize them now for what they are – yearnings for what never was and can never be in this world; yearnings that are meant to point me to the Land of Promise where the deepest longings of our hearts will be fulfilled in a manner that is beyond our imagination.  My aim is to be like Moses who, “…chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.  He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (Hebrews 11:25-26)