There must be some psychological explanation but yawning is contagious. It is the same with grumbling and discontentment. It happens in a marriage, in families and certainly in congregations. Sadly a little grumbling goes a long way. Seeing grumbling for what it is helps us. My grumbling is not just against others or circumstances but against the Lord. It is not a little thing.

Dear all at IPC,

When I told Claire I was going to write a Minister’s letter on grumbling, she said, “Well you’re the man to do it”. I’ve tried to reflect recently on why I’m so prone to grumbling. The Collins dictionary defines grumbling as, ”to murmur or mutter in discontent; complain sullenly”.

I’m not the first to struggle with this sin, it has been a constant for the people of God.

The first instance of grumbling in the Bible is in Exodus 15:24, where the newly redeemed people of God fresh from joyfully singing His praise – “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”

Just three days later they grumble against Moses in the wilderness saying, “what will we drink?”. What began in Chapter 15 as a trickle of grumbling becomes a torrent in the next chapter. In chapter 16 verses 2,7,8,9,12 all make reference to their grumbling and it moves from grumbling about Moses to grumbling, “against the Lord”. In Numbers 14-17 we see the same pattern – Grumbling against Moses and Aaron and grumbling about their situation but when God addresses them He states that their grumbling is actually against him.

When the people of the Lord lost sight of who God was, what he had done and how he had provided, they very quickly began to grumble and this became an often reverted to action. One writer has said that, “The root of grumbling is a blindness to God’s grace”.

Grumbling reappears in the gospels, the Pharisees and the Scribes, (those socially upright and religious leaders), murmur at Jesus receiving and eating with tax collectors and sinners, (Luke 5:30, 15:2, 19:7). The Jewish people grumble at His teaching, “I am the bread of heaven’ , (John 6:41), and how he has been sent from His Father heaven. It’s a mirror image of the people of Israel moaning in the wilderness. The disciples follow suit grumbling to themselves that his teaching is too hard, (John 6:43), and from that point on many of the disciples turned away from him. In the gospels this grumbling reveals a heart of unbelief.

When we come to Epistles of the New Testament, there are commands to be obeyed, imperatives to be heeded – “Do all things without grumbling”, (Philippians 2:14), “Do not grumble against one another so that you may not be judged”, (James 5:9), “..show hospitality without grumbling”, (1 Peter 4:9), “…nor grumble, as some of them did when they were destroyed by the destroyer”, (1 Corinthians 10:10). The New Testament writers see the obvious danger in church life of grumbling and have no problems in commanding us not to do it.

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