The pull back to Egypt
We wish we had died in Egypt
It does not take long. Weeks, maybe — barely past the parted sea, the water still drying on their sandals — and Israel is already homesick for slavery. We wish we had died in Egypt by the flesh-pots, they cry, where we sat and ate our fill of bread. Listen to what nostalgia does to the memory. It keeps the flesh-pots and quietly deletes the whips. By Numbers it has gotten even more vivid and more absurd: they remember the fish they ate for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, the garlic — a slave's menu recalled as a feast. For nothing, they say, as though slavery were generosity, as though their masters had been feeding them out of love rather than working them to keep them strong. This is the strange power of the wilderness. It makes Egypt look good. The in-between place is so disorienting, so stripped of the old familiar fullness, that the mind goes hunting backward for comfort and finds it in the very bondage God just tore them out of. They are not lying, exactly. They really do remember the melons. They have simply forgotten the chains that came with them.
“We wish that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
— Israel in the wilderness — Exodus 16:3 (WEB)
“We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic.”
This is disorientation in full — the wilderness between the old life and the new, where bearings are gone and the mind goes hunting backward. The phase asks you to refuse the pull of nostalgia, to recognize the longing for Egypt as the wilderness talking, and to keep facing forward when going back feels like relief.
Sooner or later the wilderness will set you idealizing the very thing God broke you out of: the old certainty that answered every question, even falsely; the relationship that was killing you slowly, remembered now as warmth; the old self that was familiar, if never free. Somewhere in the disorientation — when the new thing has not arrived and the old thing is irretrievably gone — you will catch yourself idealizing the exact bondage God broke you out of. The old certainty that answered every question, even though it was answering them falsely. The old self that was at least familiar, even if it was not free. The longing feels like homecoming, but it is the wilderness talking, and the wilderness lies.
If you actually went back, you would not get the melons; you would get the whips again, because the melons were always the bait on the bondage. It tells you Egypt was better. It was not. You are remembering the cucumbers and forgetting the chains. The way through an upheaval is forward, through the wilderness, hard as that is — not back into the house of slavery dressed up by memory as home. Do not trust the homesickness. It is pointing you toward Egypt, and Egypt is not where God is going.
Whenever the wider Church loses its old footing, nostalgia rises with it: a longing for the era of fuller pews and unquestioned authority, for Christendom when the faith sat at the culture's center and belonging felt automatic. Movements form to march the Body backward into a remembered golden age. But that memory keeps the certainties and quietly deletes the cost: the coercion, the compromise, the captivity to power that came bundled with the standing. The recurring rummage sale Phyllis Tickle traced does not move the Church back into a tidied past; it clears the way forward. Before a watching world, the Body's homesickness for its own Egypt is not the voice of God. His road runs through the wilderness, not back into the slavery memory has dressed up as home.
The God going forward, not back. The wilderness shakes your bearings and your memory; the One leading through it does not change. What cannot be shaken is that He is ahead of you, in the unfamiliar country — never behind you, in the Egypt you are tempted to crawl back toward.
- What bondage is my memory quietly dressing up as something I miss?
- Which chains am I forgetting when I remember the cucumbers of the old life?
- Is my homesickness pointing me forward through the wilderness, or backward into Egypt?
Lord, the wilderness is making my old bondage look like home, and I am aching to go back. Remind me of the chains I am forgetting. Keep me facing forward when going back feels like relief. You are ahead of me, not behind me. Lead me through, not back. Amen.