It may be tantalizing to consider leaving your problems behind, but take them to Him instead.
In the midst of the judgment of the Lord on the people for their grumbling, they “cried out to Moses, and when Moses prayed to the Lord, the fire was quenched” (Num 11:2). The equation seems very simple. Complaining heats things up. Communing cools things off. Take your pick. But dissatisfaction is a hard master, and the people’s complaining had become the default setting. If anything wasn’t to their liking, instead of asking God for help, they acted like petulant children. In fact, as Moses walked through the camp a short time after the lesson at Taberah, he “heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent” (v 10). Really? A national pity party! But we don’t have to go too far from home these days to hear our own nation whose conversations are filled with complaints. The upshot on this occasion was an impassioned conversation between Moses and the Lord, since “the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased” (v 10). Moses thinks he can’t take any more. “Did I conceive all these people?” he asks. “Did I beget them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers?” (v 12). In other words, These people are acting like cry babies. Am I obliged to haul them kicking and screaming all the way to Canaan? “They weep all over me” (v 13), he says, and continues. “I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in Your sight” (vv 14-15). Believers have the least to lose and the most to gain by dying, but that never is ours to choose. God has a much better solution!