Monday Morning Meditation #15: We Want What We Want, and It Is More Than We Have

Last Monday I finished Leviticus, and ironically yesterday a new follower, Dee, wrote about the importance of Leviticus in her life on one of my other blogs, Modern Mysticism. One day, based on her comments, I will go back and look at Leviticus more closely. For now, though, I am buried in Numbers, which, I found out, has nothing to do with math but with such things as counting people (the first census!) for the purpose of drafting males for war. (I had no idea that this practice has existed for centuries and was begun by God! That is wild!) So much else that I thought was modern appears to have roots dozens of centuries ago, actions that are enumerated in Numbers: the beginning of the priesthood (a very literal calling of the Levites, the offspring of Aaron), continuation of rules for living (e.g., the exclusion of lepers that continued well past the time of St. Francis), and the concept of sin-contrition-confession-penance. However, none of these practices, as curiously satisfying as it was to learn their origins, struck me nearly as strongly as did the complaints of the people against God for giving them only manna: "And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting; and the children of Israel also wept on their part, and said: 'Would that we were given flesh to eat! We remember the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all; we have nought save this manna to look to.'"

Readings: Numbers 11:4-6.

Meditation: I wonder how often we look God's gift horses in the mouth, so to speak. Manna was a great gift, a wonderful food, but once surfeited with it, the people wanted more. Don't we tend to do the same kind of thing today? We begin, for example, with a starter house, knowing that we are not going to be satisfied with that, knowing that we are going to want more, before we even fully experience what we have. We want upgrades on plane flights. We want to kingsize our meals (which is not even healthy and often results in having to kingsize our clothes). We carefully plan to keep our families small so that all our children can have more, whether or not they truly need more. Somewhere once upon a time I read that my children's toys -- pots and pans and the like -- are better at facilitating the development of creativity than all those fancy toys I could never afford. At any rate, my kids never complained, grew up to be creative adults, and do not overindulge their kids, which makes me think that all those extra things and multiple gifts -- we never gave more than one gift to each child at Christmas -- were not necessary in the long run. One year we had no money at all for Christmas gifts, so Donnie used his graphic arts skills to make a book of coupons for each child. Each coupon was good for a special activity to be done together with Mom or Dad, e.g., a trip to the zoo, a couple hours of playing together in the park, a tete-a-tete dinner at McDonald's, the opportunity to cook dinner together with Donnie (I could not help much with that -- as Doah wrote in his book about me: "Mommy is a very nice Mommy, but she is a very bad cook"), and so on. They had 12 months to redeem their coupons. All were redeemed over time, spreading Christmas over a whole year. The kids remember that incredibly impoverished Christmas as their favorite.

Today our children are grown. We had a lot of them because ones we did not birth kept appearing at our door, growing the Mahlou clan, whether or not we could responsibly afford to do so. We had little money, but we had a lot of love. I would rather have it that way than the other way around. As for affording them, whenever God put another one in front of us, God gave us the wherewithall to help that one, including, in one case, sending us a billionaire to cover a million-dollar medical bill for a child from Siberia. Looking back on it, all we ever had was manna, but manna was enough. I would not trade it for all the rice in China or, for that matter, all the baklava in Greece.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on sending me His manna for it indeed is my favorite food, to repent for times that I may have drooled over an American apple pie that I did not need and that would not really bring me either happiness or health, to give thanks for all the ways in which God takes care of me and mine every day, and to offer praise for the ways in which He manages to orchestrate caring for all the needs of everyone in the world who will go to Him to ask and even often of those who don't know to ask or won't ask, just because He is merciful.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any new understanding with which He is willing to bless me and, if nothing else, then welcoming nothing but His presence. The sheer joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week enriched by the eating of God's manna. May you be blessed by the way in which He cares for you.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 35-57 and Leviticus or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. Yes, I know it has been 14 weeks, but I am exceptionally computer-inept. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.