Yesterday's Scripture reading for the Office of Readings start with these words: "The foreign elements among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented again..." (Numbers 11:4, NAB)
I checked several different translations for this verse. Several of them called the protagonist of that sentence "the rabble among them" or "the mixt multitude." The mixt multitude phrase was also used of the Egyptian or mixed race people that left Egypt with the Israelites.
This struck me and immediately got me thinking. I knew the Israelites complained a lot while wandering in the desert, but this detail had slipped my attention. Now, I'm going to go with the typological reading of the early church fathers, because clearly the key variable is not the ethnicity or foreignness of the individuals involved. The mixedness of the multitude is not about genes; it is about connection with the Lord.
It made me think about the voices we listen to. What forms my desires and fuels my thoughts? Is it the Word of God, or is it my Facebook feed?
How about those marketing voices that tell me that at my age, my skin is wrinkly and I need their products to look young? Or that my children will be scarred if I don't protect their bodies, minds, and souls with their products, programs and remedies? Or that you can mark your calendar for the descent into anarchy if you don't elect this party and that candidate, and that since evil has already overtaken everything, your only hope is this new ideology which you must live hard and fight against all others, or die yourself. They are all marketing. Your money, your power, your allegiance, your mind -- they want them all to belong to them. Actually, they'll tell you they already have you and you simply can't escape.
"The foreign elements among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented."
The world was so full of chaos that even the Christians were full of chaos. Because the Christians were surrounded by the complaining of the world, and let it fill them.
Daily we need to face the reality before us, our interior, our exterior reality. Psalm 145:2 needs to be our practice: "Every day I will bless you." And we bless God by placing Him first, His voice, His word, His truth, His claims over our lives. Entrusting ourselves to His care, His lordship, His way. Discipleship is a daily turning back to the Lord to know, love and serve Him and Him alone.
How can we possibly bear witness of the presence of God in our lives to the world if we are thinking just like the world and conforming ourselves to a standard devoid of God's standard?
A practical way of drawing the mind and heart back to the way of the Lord is to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The two hinges, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, are the starting point for disciplining our thought input, but the other five pieces (not literally hours) spread throughout the day help pull our minds back. You might think you don't have time for it, but I'll bet that right now you find time to scroll through social media or check the news or play a game or mindlessly text someone. You can even put Laudate on your phone for free when you can't carry a book with you.
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