Thought for the Day - Why do we put up with things longer than we have to?

There are many preachers that have used the theme of ‘One More Night With the Frogs’ as a sermon title so I am not going to pretend that it is original.

But it was fun telling the story at our ‘Kid’s Club’ the other day. A lot of drama and “Squish, Squish, Squishing” going on as I told the story.

The brief version of the Exodus 8 story is that Moses goes back into Pharoah and says: God said: “Let My people go!”

Of course, Moses is told no way, and so he goes down to the Nile River when Pharoah is there and Aaron stretches his rod over the water and frogs come up and cover the land.

Pharoah’s magicians do the same thing. I suspect that Pharoah had a bit of a: ‘There take that,’ kind of moment as his guys duplicated Aaron and Moses’ God.

After a period of time, Pharoah had had enough and his magicians couldn’t put the frogs back in the river, so Moses and Aaron were called in for a wee conference at which time Pharoah was asked: “When do you want the frogs gone?” Well, I’d have said, Right NOW.

But Pharaoh said: “Tomorrow.” Just give me one more night with the frogs.

And that’s what happened and the scripture says the “they gathered the frogs in heaps and the land stank.”

Pharoah moaned and groaned but still put up with the frogs one more night.

I wonder how often are we willing to put up with issues we could have done something about.

But our own choice is: one more night, just a bit longer, I’ll put up with something I don’t like, before I do something about it.

We may even have a way out, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we stay right where we are.

Our pride, our stubborn streak, gets the best of our sense and we just endure what could be fixed.

Hebrews 3:15 reminds us: “Today if you will hear God’s voice, don’t harden your heart.”

Pharoah’s problem wasn’t the frogs, he just wanted his own way without listening to God.

Sometimes waiting is required but often it is just we need to obey.