I remember that I was at a meeting when one of the participants there was complaining about just about everything imaginable. The person sitting next to me turned to me and said: “He complains more than the Israelites did when they were wandering through the desert.” Yes, it certainly seems like the people of Israel complained a lot in their journey through the desert. They always seem to see the glass half empty rather than half full. They seem to see negativity in just about everything. For that reason, that generation was not allowed to enter into the promised land. After I spent time overseas as a missionary, that was one of the things that struck me most when I returned to the United States: We American can sometimes grumble and complain about a lot of things, even when we have it better off than many others in the world. It is not good to be labeled as a complainer, is it? Are we that way in our lives of faith, too? Do we complain to God about just about everything? Are we never content with what we have, always complaining that things need to be better? Does the grass always seem so much greener in someone else’s backyard? For the last week of the Ignatian spiritual exercises that I prayed in Spain, the theme is joy - the joy of the resurrection of Christ. Christ wants us to be joyful in our lives of faith. In our joy, let us sing praises to God. Let us be thankful for the blessings that we have. It is so easy to complain. But, God calls us to find joy in our lives.
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