September 18, 2011 | 8:00 a.m.

Whining to God

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 105:1–6, 37–45
Matthew 20:1–16
Exodus 16:2–15

Gratitude teaches us to acknowledge the authority, the goodness, and the love of God. Gratitude expresses the hope we have for the future that we draw from God’s faithfulness in the past and in the present as the companion alongside of us.

Roberta Hestenes

My husband had a bedtime ritual with his daughter Jennifer when she was little, which was remembering what Jennifer called “the nice stings” about the day. It’s a great practice that would help any of us be grateful for the blessings of our lives. But even with that daily practice, little Jennifer, like all children, would still fall into whining. We have a precious tape recording of one of those times when she really wanted some candy. Sitting by the tape recorder, her dad said to her, “Say ‘I want some candy’ and whine.” Her little two-year-old voice responded, “I want some candy and wine.”

Complaining is so common for us, that there is a travel tour company—Rick Steves—that has a policy to address it. Among the papers that travelers with Rick Steves tours need to sign in advance is a Tour Member Participation Agreement. It includes some typical things one may expect. But it also includes a surprising dimension that asks travelers to “embrace and participate in our NO GRUMPS policy.” It says:

An important part of the Rick Steves tour experience is meeting and appreciating others. Your behavior, good or bad, can affect the entire group. Please practice considerate social behavior with your fellow tour members and the locals we encounter, respecting their habits and cultural differences.

Understand that if you are a solo traveler, you will be assigned a same-sex roommate who may have different sleep habits and might snore like a gorilla (that’s why we give you earplugs). . . .

Agree that you won’t be allowed to smoke indoors during the tour unless you’re on fire.

Look forward to surprises, understanding that itineraries, like the rest of life, are subject to change.

Having been on a recent Rick Steves trip, I can attest that this No Grumps policy helped!

This past Tuesday at our weekly staff meeting, the Fourth Church program staff learned that one of our pastors, Linda Loving, has her own policy, which is not to pass judgment in the first three months of anything new. Whether it’s a new job, a new marriage, a recent divorce, a new place to live, don’t say, “What have I done?” She had shared that with Judy Watt, our new Associate Pastor for Congregational Care, and Judy announced that this week marked the completion of her third month, so watch out!

The people in the Exodus story hadn’t agreed to a No Grumps policy and didn’t know about Linda Loving’s policy for three months. It is only the fifteenth day of the second month after the people’s liberation from their oppressors back in Egypt. Only forty-five days into the trip, with thirty-nine years to go, they have already thrown two pity parties and are on the verge of a third.

The first time it was when all of Pharaoh’s army, chariots and drivers 600 strong, were advancing on them. In fear the people cried to Moses, “What have you done, bringing us out of Egypt? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in this God-forsaken place.” Moses responded, “Be not afraid. Stand firm, and you will see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today. The Lord will fight for you” (Exodus 14:13–14). And indeed, the people crossed the Red Sea safely, leaving their enemies in the mud.

But just three days later, they were murmuring again. This time it was about water. They had gone three days without any, and when they finally did come upon water, it was so bitter they couldn’t drink it. Again, God responded in mercy, empowering Moses with the tools to make the water sweet.

But before long, they were grumbling again. This time they were worried about food. And once again, Moses and Aaron assured them, “In the morning you will know that it was God who brought you out of slavery. God has heard your complaining” (Exodus 16:6–7).

God responds to their anger, not with anger or punishment, but in mercy. God rains manna from heaven upon them so they will be fed and filled. But the people didn’t recognize it as such. They asked Moses, “What is this?” He had to explain, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”

That’s the problem with complaining. We become so focused on what’s missing or what’s wrong or could go wrong that we fail to recognize the blessings God is already showering upon us. Now there is a place for lament and grieving; sometimes we do suffer deeply. That’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about a habitual mindset that assumes and expects the absolute worst and then, when something happens, sees only the negative in it rather than any possibilities for good. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle.

In my office I have a little plastic Eeyore, the donkey from the stories of Winnie the Pooh who constantly says, “O bother!” Eeyore goes through life knowing that no matter what happens, whatever he wants to happen will go wrong and he can count on it. Eeyore lives his life with his head down and his tail bedraggled. I have him by my desk to remind me that it’s a choice whether to live like Eeyore.

A similar character is the Marshwiggle, in a story by C. S. Lewis called The Silver Chair. The Marshwiggle sets out with two children on a great adventure to rescue the lost prince, an adventure of faith. But the Marshwiggle says, “We can count on it. We will get lost. We will start to attack each other. We will probably end up killing each other. There is no way we can succeed in this venture anyway.”

The habit of grumbling is one that can infect the soul. It falsifies the past. While the Israelites were grumbling, they overlooked the previous conditions of their slavery and oppression. They doubted what God was doing. Theologian Dorothee Sölle captured this in a poem called “Exodus”:

When Israel departed from Egypt
when oppression came to an end
when they refused to be exploited any longer
when they got rid of the slave drivers
security became a thing of the past
things got tough
consumer goods were scarce
the people grumble
would to god we had died in the land of Egypt
when we sat by the fleshpots
and when we did eat bread to the full
for you have brought us forth into this wilderness
to kill this whole assembly with hunger

When Israel departed from Egypt
when the construction workers laid down their tools
and the brickmakers had had enough
of baking bricks for the pharaoh’s tombs
the good life came to an end
they started worrying about
where they would wind up
and what would become of them

the people grumble
if only we had some meat
remember the fish we ate in Egypt for free
the cucumbers melons onions garlic
now all we ever get
is manna . . .

(Dorothee Sölle, “Exodus,” Revolutionary Patience, 1977)

Dr. Roberta Hestenes said,

Grumbling catches us up in a spirit, an attitude which causes us to focus on unbelief instead of on belief. . . . Grumbling also teaches us to distrust God. It is a denial that God is good and that God means good for us, that even in difficult and hard circumstances, the loving God is compassionately reaching towards us that we might know that we are loved, redeemed, and called out of bondage into freedom. Grumbling denies the goodness of God. . . .

God never rejects the cry of the needy. God hears and cares, listens and loves and works in history and in our lives, so that we might have purpose and meaning and joy in the journey. But grumbling cheats us out of that. (From the broadcast “Grumbling or Gratitude: Expressions in the Wilderness” by Roberta Hestenes, Program #3629, 9 May 1993)

Catholic priest and author Richard Rohr has spent much time in Third World countries. He perceives one big difference between a majority of people who live in the United States and people who live in the Third World: Americans expect life to go smoothly, and when it doesn’t, we complain. But in the Third World, people expect life to be difficult, and when it’s not, they express gratitude.

We have experienced this difference in our own neighborhood. Chicago Lights, our nonprofit outreach organization, has formed a task force with the Center for Whole Health to assess what new health service initiatives may be most needed and effective among the low-income people we serve. This past week three women residents of Cabrini told the task force what life was like for them. They said, “Living in Cabrini, you live to die. We’ve all been beaten down. Our environment is full of asbestos and lead in the paint. A high number of our people suffer from lung cancer. Many others struggle with dementia, heart trouble, asthma, sugar problems, other cancer—and no one helps you.”

“With only $100 to pay bills, people can’t afford to go to the nearby clinic. If you don’t have a medical card, you can’t get medicines. It takes all day on the bus to get medications. Sometimes people don’t have money for the bus or are old and can’t walk well or stand long, so they just don’t get their prescriptions. Meals on Wheels was cut for our seniors, so now they have very little to eat. It’s hard to ask for help, even food, we are so proud.”

Another said, “I take three inhalers for my asthma. That’s $25 a month times three. I can’t pay that, so I just buy my breathing medicine off the street for $5. . . . You grow up thinking you are nobody, no one loves you, your mom is on drugs, your father is in jail. It’s just a blessing when you know someone is just listening to you.”

Feeling pretty overwhelmed by their hardship, one of the task force members asked, “With all this in mind and what you’ve shared about your daily lives, what keeps you going?” Tearfully and with great emotion, the women responded, “It’s prayer and love. . . . I know who loves me no matter what. It keeps me going.” And as the meeting ended, one said, “Remember God’s love is always surrounding you.” They talked freely about their faith and easily praised God.

Those women had a big impact on the task force members, not only through the depth of their suffering, but also the depth of their faith and perseverance. One church member told me, “As I drove home from the meeting that night, I decided to stop complaining about the car problems I’d been having. At least I have a car.”

The alternative to grumbling is to express gratitude. The scriptures often encourage this. The instruction is simple: “Praise God. Be thankful. Give thanks.” It is a spiritual practice we can all do. Priest Henri Nouwen thought that if we do not express our gratitude for blessings, then we will not fully experience either the blessings or the gratitude. He wrote, “I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I know that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all that I am and have is given me as a gift of love.”

Let us not ever forget God loves us and that we have much for which we can be thankful. Let’s all practice that bedtime or morning ritual each day, remembering to thank God for “the nice stings.”