We see this played out perfectly in today’s first reading. The Israelites only two months into the journey and already they “grumble” or perhaps better “murmur.” It’s that low rumble you get among the discontent. But the source of the murmur is collective erroneous memory. They look back on their time in Egypt and they, perhaps unconsciously, cherry pick the memory or the life. They remember the food (better than it was). They remember shelter. But that have forgotten the slavery. And you can bet that in the group there were those who encouraged the erroroneous memory. There are always those who wish to paint the past as somehow better than the present.
While it is good for us to learn from the past, we must be very careful not to dwell there. Every moment spent dwelling in the past is a moment lost in the present. Our short lives march on, continuously moving forward, like the people of Israel in the Exodus.
Our brains were designed by God not to store but to process information: to learn, to evaluate, to choose. It’s what our brains do best. It is the choosing that makes us human. It is the choosing that makes us moral. Each day is filled with choices, and signs of the presence of God. If we spend our time making the right choices today, we have no time to yearn for a yesterday that never was.
