Some Days I Just Want To Go Back To Egypt

Today is the second anniversary of me getting laid off from the private school that I had been working at for six years, after I had been offered the position of the first full time school counselor in the schools history including a substantial pay increase. The spring before, there had been a huge upheaval and the principal/superintendent was let go. The gentleman who the school board brought in had big plans. Within the private school world that is a big deal because very few private schools have full time school counselors. I spent the summer preparing for my new assignment including researching additional classes. Then two days before school was to start, I got THE call. The voice on the other end was that of the principal. “This is one of the hardest things I have had to do”, he began. “The board wants me to cut another million dollars of the budget, so I am going to have to let you go”. He then begged off because he had a meeting. Wow, I thought to myself, let me go and save a million dollars. This must be how a pro athlete feels when they are let go. Yes, it was the only time in my life when I ever felt like a pro athlete. In the last two years I have had some highs and lows. But as one lady at church put it weeks ago, “people have hurt me or let me down, but God has never failed me”.
Yet in the last couple of weeks as the pressure has mounted. Continued therapy from my car accident: not being able to work because of the pain and therapy; bills needing to be paid; sniping with my wife has led me to longingly think back to my teaching days. Saying, “Oh Lord, why did all that have to happen to me”? Then I try to force myself to remember how hard was to get days off because the school had no money for substitutes, that was especially troublesome when my father was dying of cancer. Or dealing with the parents who believed they paid your salary and treated me like a hired hand and not an educated person.
A few nights ago in my devotional I was reading about as the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness they became frustrated with God. They were tired, hungry and angry with God, to the point where they were saying that “He just led us out here to die”. “We were better off being slaves in Egypt. At least there, we had our bellies full”. You read that and you wonder how God’s people could just give up on Him. Where was their faith”? Then you turn off your lights, lay in the darkness and begin to pray. As you whine about this and that, thinking about your past life. That life may not have been the best, but at least you had a twice monthly pay check. You could always depend on the money. But now God, I have to make choices about money and how to spend it. Sometimes just spending time in prayer hoping that a trip to the mail box will contain a check. Knowing that little old ladies feel sorry for me and buy me a ticket to Mariner game and blah, blah.
Then it hits you, YOU ARE AN ISRAELITE!