I tend to be a bit of a whiner. It just seems like sometimes it’s way easier to see the negatives vs the positives. Sort of like how the news tends to report way more negatives stories than it does positive ones. Or how typical conversations are often about what’s wrong with our government or the economy or how that Chinese restaurant messed up my order yesterday.
As a Christian, I like to consider what pleases God or what bothers him in our behavior. The journey of the Israelites in the desert with Moses was a picture of the Christian life. Out of a million Jews… only two entered into the promised land. Why? If you read through the story, those people experienced many awesome miracles from God, but they were largely ungrateful. They whined a lot. And that did not turn out well for them. They whined about not having food. Then, after God started providing food for them daily, they whined about the lack of variety in their diet. At one time God caused the earth to open up and swallow several thousand of them in one fell swoop. Because they wouldn’t stop whining. This is a big deal to God.
If one believes the Bible, one must conclude that things and circumstances in our life occur for a reason. One of God’s primary wishes for us is that we grow. This is way more important to him than our “comfort”. When we encounter things that we consider unpleasant, it’s often an opportunity for personal growth, specifically engineered by God for our benefit. What kind of people would we be if everything always went our way? Spoiled brats perhaps.
Do we really believe that God is in control? Then what exactly are we doing when we whine about our circumstances or problems in our life? We are essentially questioning the fairness of God. It’s like saying that we don’t approve of His handling of us or the affairs of our life.
In addition, consider how Christ suffered on His way to the cross. More than we can possibly imagine. After all, He was God. And He submitted Himself to the most humiliating suffering and death that was possible. At the hands of His own creation. He did this for us.
And we complain when we have a stomach ache.