Exodus 16:1-3 “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Are you familiar with the difference between absolute poverty and relative poverty? Absolute poverty is a standard used by such organizations as the United Nations and the World Bank. It measures the inability of people to obtain such basic needs for survival as food, shelter, safe drinking water, sanitation, and education. It is difficult to measure and can change from country to country. Currently it averages about $1.90 a day, or $700 per year. In 2011 14% of the world’s population lived in this kind of poverty. In 1981 43% of the population suffered absolute poverty. In 1820 almost 95% of all people lived in this condition. Very few Americans qualify to be categorized this way.

Relative poverty is something quite different. It is not about having the things you need to survive. It is about how you compare to others in your community or country. One measure says that if you earn less than 60% of the median household income where you live, you are in relative poverty. A person in relative poverty may feel poor even though they may be in no immediate danger of lacking life’s barest necessities.

After Israel left Egypt, the entire nation of Israel was struggling with a kind of relative poverty. They had experienced a profound change in their standard of living, and they weren’t very happy about it. The people complained about the lack of food in the desert, but it was largely an exaggeration. This was a nation of sheep-herders. There was milk, and cheese, and lamb-chops if they wanted. Relative to their life in Egypt, their diet had to change. The variety of meats must have suffered. You couldn’t go fishing in the Nile river. There were no stores selling flour for making bread out in the wilderness. You or I might have complained about the menu, too. But they weren’t going to starve to death soon. Theirs was a “relative” poverty, relative to the way they had eaten in Egypt. It wasn’t absolute.

That’s not to say this wasn’t a legitimate problem that needed to be addressed. A nation of two million people consumes a lot of food. Eventually they might deplete their flocks and herds. A number of years ago the Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army estimated that two freight trains, each a mile long, would be needed each day to transport enough food to feed a community this large in the desert. No doubt they needed someone to work on logistics.

The bigger problem was the defeatist attitude, the criticism, the sense of entitlement, and the accusation contained in their complaint. This wasn’t an existence worse than death, and the Lord was not trying to kill them, no matter how unhappy they were with their desert rations. They sound child-like, don’t they–like the kid in the check-out line accusing mom or dad of not loving them because they won’t buy the brat a Snickers bar?

They look a little like us when we can’t appreciate the car we drive because a newer model came out that looks a little sexier or can parallel park itself. Then you see a video-clip of an entire family of six desperately clinging to one motor scooter to get somewhere in Pakistan. We feel bad that our TV isn’t 85 diagonal inches and Ultra HD while over a billion people worldwide still live without electricity.

Our own sense of envy, entitlement, and discontent can turn us against the Lord who hasn’t done anything for us except to give us our very lives, save us from sin and hell, provide everything we have, and promise us eternal joys in heaven. Why worry about whether we can afford a house when we already own a piece of heavenly paradise? Don’t forget the riches of salvation. Don’t let lean times turn us against the Giver of all.