Water from the Rock

Empty water skins. Cracked lips. Children crying for a drink. And a crowd closing in around one old man, with stones within easy reach.

The people of Israel are moving through the desert in stages, setting out whenever the Lord tells them to. They have been fed with manna every morning. They have seen the Lord lead them with a cloud. Now they make camp at a place called Rephidim. Nobody today knows exactly where it was, but everyone in the camp quickly knows one thing about it. There is no water. Not a spring, not a well, not a puddle. And in the desert, that is not an inconvenience. It is life or death.

The people go straight to Moses. “Give us water to drink!” Moses answers, “Why are you quarrelling with me? Why are you putting the Lord to the test?” But thirst does not listen to reason. The anger grows. “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt? To kill us, and our children, and our animals with thirst?” Think about how quickly this has happened. These are the same people who walked through the sea on dry ground. Who eat bread from heaven every single morning. And yet one dry camp, and they are ready to believe God has abandoned them.

Moses does the only thing he knows to do. He cries out to the Lord. “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Notice what Moses does not do. He doesn't run. He doesn't hit back. He doesn't pretend everything is fine. He takes his fear, and the people's anger, straight to God. And God answers right away. Not with a lecture. With a plan.

“Go on ahead of the people,” the Lord says. “Take some of the elders of Israel with you. And take in your hand the staff you used to strike the Nile. I will stand there before you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, and the people will drink.” So Moses walks out in front, with the elders watching. He finds the rock. He lifts the staff, the same staff that once turned a river to blood, and he brings it down. And out of the dry stone, water comes. Enough for the whole camp. Enough for the children and the animals. The people drink.

But Moses does not want anyone to forget what happened here. So he gives the place two names. Massah, which means testing, and Meribah, which means quarrelling. Because the people quarrelled, and because they tested the Lord by asking one question. “Is the Lord among us, or not?” It is the question underneath all the shouting. Not really, where is the water, but, is God still with us? And the answer is flowing out of a rock in the middle of the desert.

Israel never forgot Massah and Meribah. Centuries later, Moses warns the next generation, do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. Psalm 95, still sung in churches and synagogues, says, do not harden your hearts as your ancestors did that day in the wilderness. And the apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, looks back at this moment and says that the rock that followed them was Christ. One afternoon in the desert became a lesson for a whole people.

Water from the Rock. You'll find it in Exodus chapter 17, verses 1 to 7. When things went dry, the people asked whether God was still with them. He answered by giving them exactly what they needed. So here's the question to carry with you. When life feels dry, do you quarrel, or do you cry out to God?