Inordinate Frustration Over Lost Labor

After working on a project for Sonlight much of the week, I went to send it off, completed, when the program crashed, and it turned out that, for whatever reason, none of my work had been saved.

Doggedly, I began again, only to realize after about 90 minutes that, despite appearances to the contrary, the program was still not saving my work.

This made me almost frantic, and I think I had a little taste of what it would be like to do something, day in and day out, that I felt had no purpose. To work for a week on a project that doesn’t come to fruition frustrated me inordinately; to work for a lifetime on a job that served no one—that would be more devastating than I can imagine.

This has been a weepy week for me. I suppose that happens sometimes. I realized this evening that, since visiting Colorado, there's been a little wish within that we weren't here doing this crazy thing, that I had countertops free of thousands of flies and one muddy cat, with kitchen cabinets and Costco, with sister and brother and family. Once I acknowledged that, the next words that came to mind were from a Keith Green song:

"So you want to go back to Egypt, where you're warm and secure?"

Oof, these moments of spiritual growth. Not always comfortable.

This is a little taste, perhaps, of how the Israelites felt. They had a spiritual high while leaving Egypt, saw God's amazing faithfulness and experienced freedom. But as they wandered in a hard place, the memories of slavery faded, and they remembered only the fresh green vegetables and, probably, their hovels.

I haven't really understood the appeal before. They were eating manna from heaven, for pete's sake, following a physical manifestation of God in the cloud.

But transition and change, week after week, no real settlement, no real home—that is wearying.

That said, they were stupid to want to return to slavery. I, too, am not smart to long for ease, when I'm called to be here.