Like a gift you didn’t expect, like a smile from a grumpy grandboy after a nap, like a taste of chocolate in trail mix. When it comes to March, each fair day feels like this.

I love the drama of March weather–sometimes winter, sometimes spring. It can be wild rain and wind, tornadoes and school closings one week and balmy the next; the perfect weather for planting pots on the back porch.

High and low. Unpredictable. Exciting. This is something like what the book of Numbers has been like.

There’s been a lot of madness to report of the shenanigans of God’s people. But on this last day of reading, I see how the lowlights have actually made the bright breakthroughs more dazzling.

Because regardless of their disappointing life choices, God keeps right on loving and forgiving them. Despite their failures, God keeps showing up.

This is who God is–the One we can depend on, no matter what.

Numbers 35-36

In these last two chapters, there are instructions about distributing the Promised Land they’re about to take over, mainly sharing cities with the Levites who won’t get any land for their tribe.

Numbers started out with a lot of impersonal information and unsurprisingly, it was about numbers. A census is followed by instructions about how to leave Mt. Sinai, camp out, and organize the Levites. The offerings made by the 12 tribes at the dedication of the Tabernacle are also recorded with an accountant’s tedious accuracy, Nu 1-7.

Next are miscellaneous laws about purifying Levites, making up the Passover if you miss it, what the bugle and cloud signals mean, and how they’re to march, Nu 8-10. 

And then comes the skinny on the disappointing behavior among God’s people. In fact, most of the rest of the book of Numbers is taken up by one disturbing tale after another.

Here are some lowlights:

Israel whines about the food and being thirsty so often, it’s easy to feel irritated and judge them. But they eat the same thing for 40 years and rarely have a reliable supply of water. I’m feeling it, Nu 11-14, 20.

To make matters worse, Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ siblings, rebel against him. And once this baby nation reaches Kadesh and the land God’s promised them, the spies they send in to check it out give a bad report, and the people refuse to take it, Nu 11-14, 20.

Then Korah leads a rebellion along with 250 others against Moses and Aaron, because they suspect they’re making up stuff and only pretending that God says it. God’s response is to open the ground beneath the ring leaders and swallow them and to burn up their 250 followers who deliberately defy him, Nu 16-17.

Nuff said? 

Nope.

The very next day, Moses and Aaron are blamed for the deaths of those now dead. God’s response is simple and immediate: he sends a plague and 14,700 are killed before Aaron saves the rest by offering incense, Nu 16:41-50.

When they’re attacked, God helps and they win the battle and get back their captured people, but then they complain that God’s deserted them. They’re disciplined with biting snakes in the desert and saved simply by looking at one that’s raised up like a flag, Nu 21.

Balaam, a pagan prophet, comes up with a plan to earn a lot of money from the king who wants to stop Israel: let the Midianite women seduce the Israelite men to worship their god, Baal. It works, but thousands lose their lives in the plague God sends afterwards that Phineas stops by stabbing the fornicators, Nu 22-25.

At this point, I’m expecting God to say, I’m done. These people are as hopeless as their parents, because they are. There’s hardly a bright spot in the whole book people-wise, except for Aaron, who stops the first plague, and his grandson, Phineas, who stops the second, Nu 16:46-48, 25:6-8.

Interestingly, the sad and sinful stories stop here, and the rest of Numbers is about Moses taking another census to find out how many people are left for the purpose of actually giving them the land God’s been promising. Unbelievably, God tells them after this how to celebrate in worship, because he has disciplined and forgiven, Nu 26-29.

It’s not the first time I’ve felt confounded by what God does. His people have complained and blamed him, disbelieved and completely disobeyed him–yet he’s not saying any words of reprimand? And the plan to give them the Promised Land stands? And they get to take off days from work to enjoy God at the Tabernacle?

There’s nothing here about suffering consequences or giving them the cold shoulder, but only God’s plans for giving them the land they don’t deserve and for teaching them how to enjoy him in worship, Nu 28-30.

If you ask me, God’s parenting is suspect. He doesn’t parent—he spare-ents.

The book of Numbers ends with some *appendixes, like a map-worthy summary of Israel’s travels from Egypt to Jericho and a geography of the Promised Land’s boundaries, Nu 33-35.

And then there’s the very last chapter about who Zelophehad’s daughters marry. They’d asked for their father’s land in order to preserve his name in his tribal clan because Zelo had no sons, and God granted what his girls asked for, Nu 27:1-11.

The tribal leaders foresee how the daughters might lose their father’s land along with his name if they marry outside their clan, so they bring up the issue. It’s kind that they trouble themselves, is how I read it, though it also benefits the whole tribe for Zelo’s land to stay part of it, Nu 36. 

God’s verdict is that Zelo’s girls must marry within their family clan, so their land stays within their tribe. And the daughters agree and “did just as God commanded,” Nu 36:5-12.

The daughters’ willingness to abide by God’s command is refreshing after so much straight up rebellion and disobedience by so many in this book, Nu 36:10-12.

It takes faith to trust that God’s words are really best. And it’s beautiful to watch these women believe what he says, rather than take matters into their own hands. When I think of how alien such an attitude is for our culture today, I feel teary.

It’s an ending I wasn’t expecting, and I want to stand up and cheer for the relief it gives, for the social relevance it has, and for the relational advice of it, “Yes, this is how men and women should live!” It’s an extraordinary way for God to end a book about people who haven’t offered much thus far to emulate.

If God were only concerned with life-after-death salvation, then who Zelo’s daughters marry would be a moot point. But it’s not moot, because God weighs in on it. He even makes a command concerning it, Nu 36:10.

His ruling charges this issue with meaning, and it reminds me that all of life on earth has importance because God Almighty cares about every part of it. His commandments prove it, and so does his listing every person’s name in the second census, which is much longer than the first, and maybe for just this reason–every life matters to him.

God is concerned about animals that fall in ditches, about children being seen and heard, about women being strong, and about men being kind, among a whole lot of other things he’s made laws about, Ex 21:33; Mt 14:14, 19:14; Mk 7:24-30; Lk 6:35-36.

Because everything matters.

If it didn’t, he would sweep us all into heaven or hell and be done with the madness of us. But he doesn’t. He tunes in. He watches. He stays up and keeps track and checks in and helps out, Ps 121:5, 127:1, 144:5-8; Pr 15:3.

Life will always-and-forever be like the month of March, wild and windy, cloudy and gray, with sunshine occasionally piercing and dazzling. God’s the One who holds both stormy and sunshiny days, right along with who will win so many infernal basketball games in my living room.

The One who made sky and seas, tides and winds, is as near as thought and breath—despite the faithlessness of people—because God is more good and forgiving and glad with us than we have any idea of.

Who could possibly turn out well with so much grace thrown in their faces? We can, because love wins.

God’s love is steadying, because it’s so astonishing.

Luke 5:1-11

Jesus asks Peter to follow him, but he doesn’t give Peter a new profession.  He just changes what he’s fishing for. 

I’m guessing that the 5,000 folks who repented and believed after one sermon thrilled Peter even more than those bursting nets of fish that nearly sank two boats, Ac 2:14, 4:4; Lk 5:4-11.  

Only Jesus could haul in a catch like this on both counts.

Without Jesus, Peter and his fishing buddies find nothing all night.  But with him, they find catches beyond their wildest dreams. 

This is what life with Jesus is like.  Bigger,  Better.  Richer.  Fuller.  Peter’s not confused about who’s the Fisherman behind the fishing men, and he’s content to follow him, because being with Jesus is more than enough. 

That’s the thing about following Jesus. The claim he makes on your life doesn’t take you out of what you’re doing, it takes you out of doing it on your own without him, Peterson, The MSG Devotional Bible, p 1177.

Having Jesus with you on the journey is the best part of it.

Jesus’ life inside us is steadying, because it’s so companionable.

Psalm 66

When life goes wonky, this psalm shows us what’s happening behind the scenes:

God’s plan is to set each of us “on the road to life,” and take us “out of the ditch,” by training and refining us, bringing us into “hardscrabble country” and pushing us “to our very limit,” Ps 66:8-11 MSG.

And while this is miserable, it’s also relieving, isn’t it? 

Because I’ve wondered what’s going on when life is crazy-hard. I feel the testing and trying the psalmist writes about, as if someone is deliberately digging in and pressing my buttons. I’m relieved to know I’m not imagining it.

It makes sense that God would “road-test us inside and out, take us to hell and back,” because I’m not motivated to seek God when things are easy. It’s comforting to read “to hell and back,” too, because it feels like that. Can I get a witness? Ps 66:10-11 MSG.

The good news about hardscrabble country is that there’s an oasis there: “Finally” God brings us “to this well-watered place,” Ps 66:12 MSG.

The best thing about being thirsty is the way water tastes when you finally drink. The best thing about suffering is the access it gives us to God in ways we never knew we needed him.

He is the well-watered place we can draw from anytime we want him.

God’s well of Living Water steadies, because he is so satisfying.

Prayer

God, Thank you for the love you keep bringing regardless of our wandering. Thank you for being the One who shows up when life goes down. Thank you for your presence that steadies me in the crazy.

In Jesus’ name, so be it.

Proverbs 11:23

The goals of good folks keep them on track. The goals of wicked folks land them angry in the ditch.

Passages for Numbers, Luke, Psalms, and Proverbs were selected for today in The Yearly Bible.

*The outline for the book of Numbers in the NIV Study Bible was a helpful resource in writing this post.

This post is from iwantmore.blog, my (almost) daily devotional blog.

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