A Good Report

By Robin Caldwell

"The Lord will give you meat to eat this evening and abundant bread in the morning, for He has heard the complaints that you are raising against Him. Who are we? Your complaints are not against us but against the Lord." (Exodus 16: 8)

Chronic complaining irritates me. I have little tolerance for complaining, especially my own. This irritation is equal opportunity and no one is exempt including yours truly.

I wait for the commuter bus with a woman who not only invades my personal space—steps all up in here—but who never has anything good to say about anything, except for me. She is quick to compliment my clothing, but generally she greets me with a complaint about the weather (it’s never perfect), traffic (we’re not driving), passers-by (creepy), and work (her co-workers are mean-spirited slackers).

Many times I’ve re-routed myself to avoid her to no avail. She found me. I’ve even begged God to change her schedule; he didn’t. She still found me.

One day, it occurred to me that my encounters with this woman were divine appointments. These appointments were designed to work something out in me. What? I didn’t know.

So I stopped resisting her. I endured many more mornings of the same routine from a fresh perspective. Ultimately, I realized that it wasn’t her that offended me and it wasn’t her complaints.

The spirit behind the complaints was offensive. There was an underlying spirit of misery and hopelessness, which is contrary to the Spirit of God. She exuded absolutely no hope or joy in a Christ she said she believed in. Thinking my revelation would free me up to continue disliking her, I continued disliking her. Whatever God was attempting to show me I’d missed. It was back to the drawing board.

Almost miraculously, however, God opened that woman’s mouth to expose her past to me. She told me that she’d been abused, homeless and penniless. Jesus had delivered her from those heart‑wrenching circumstances, she said. Her story tugged at my heart.