WEDNESDAY 26 January 2022 “Miriam” Numbers 20:1

Click To Download and Print Document or PDF

Hello my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends,

Over the past nearly two years that COVID has dominated headlines around the world, I wonder if you’ve become almost numb to the numbers? Numbers of people testing positive, numbers of people in the hospital, numbers of people in ICU, numbers of people dying, not just in your city or county or country, but all around the world? Have you noticed that we very rarely hear the wonderful stories of the thousands, and actually millions of people, who were among the statistics of the ill, the infected, but they have recovered from their COVID illness and they are doing just fine? Why is that my friends?

I wonder too, if all these dreadful numbers we hear, day after day, have insulated us to the fact that each number is a person, and there’s been so much pain, and grief? Also, how many of those people have been in hospitals or even died WITHOUT family or friends near them, as they were forced to remain at a distance? This has been a terrible two years of the COVID pandemic and all the residual effects. So today, let’s take a look at one person, one life, one legacy…even though we don’t know a great deal about her. Her name is Miriam. May I allow her to represent today, the nameless people in the statistics that we’ve become numb to over these past many months?

We’ve been on a long journey with Moses and the nearly 2 million Hebrews he has been trying to lead for a long time. Today I invite you to join me in Numbers 20 in the Bible. It begins with this: “In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.” While Moses records for us the month, he does not record the year, so I can’t confidently tell you exactly when this happened in their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Some Bible scholars believe it may have been 38 years or more since they had fled Egypt. If true, then we can presume a very large percentage of those adults, who had said NO to God, when the scouts gave their report of their 40 day exploration in the land of promise, had by now died. Most of those alive would have either been born in these past years of desert wandering or had been under age 20 when those scouts had given their report. (Numbers 13,14)

Did you notice Moses records they are at Kadesh…again. Kadesh was the place from which the scouts had gone into Canaan to explore this land God had promised to their ancestor Abraham and his descendants. I wonder what the people were feeling if in fact they are camped now near or even at the same place where, some years before, their parents had rejected God’s invitation to trust Him and follow Him into the land of Promise? Did they sit around their campfires at night talking about how much longer before the new generation would be given the opportunity by God to enter the land? What lessons had they learned as they had meandered, day after day, month after month in that hot desert, simply waiting for the older, faithless, generation to die? When would God finally give the younger generations a second chance for Canaan, how would things be different? What lessons have you and I learned, especially over the past two years since the word COVID has become a word we hear many times every day, no matter where you live in the world?

And then did you notice Moses reported that Miriam died there at Kadesh, and was buried. That’s it. No fanfare, no eulogy, no long explanation. Six words: “There Miriam died and was buried.” I wonder if it’s significant that she died and was buried at that place of terrible decision, so many years before, when the people said NO to God? I wonder, for how many thousands of people, in these past two COVID years, have these six words of Miriam’s death, been all that was said of others who died alone, died without even a funeral due to COVID? Think back with me for a moment. What do you remember about Miriam?

We know she was Moses’ older sister, for we met her for the first time (Exodus 2:1-10) when Moses was an infant and his parents made a little basket in which they placed him and put him afloat on the Nile river because the Pharaoh had issued an edict that all newborn Hebrew babies would be killed! Miriam, as a young girl, had walked along the riverbank, watching the floating basket boat which held her little brother. Miriam was wondering what the God her parents worshipped, would do. Then Miriam was amazed to see the Pharaoh’s daughter pull the basket out of the river, open it up and pick up the baby, holding his squirming little body with love! Miriam had courageously stepped forward offering to find a nurse who could feed and care for the baby until it was old enough to live with Pharaoh’s daughter who wanted to adopt the baby, even though he was obviously a Hebrew baby and should be killed by order of her father the Pharaoh! Perhaps you recall the Pharaoh’s daughter accepted the offer of Miriam, named the baby Moses, and entrusted Moses back to his birth mother to care for until he was weaned and returned to the Pharaoh’s palace to grow up as an adopted prince! What did young Miriam learn about God through all of that?

The next time we meet Miriam is perhaps nearly 80 years later! God had delivered His people, those Hebrews, from Egyptian slavery, and Moses led them, following the cloud of God’s Presence, through what I have called ‘the Red Sea water tunnel’. Standing on the far shoreline, the people are watching as the ‘miracle debris’ of Pharaoh’s drowned army floats on the Red Sea surface. Miriam rose up, and anointed by the Spirit of God, she began leading the people in a wonderful worship celebration as recorded in Exodus 15. Clearly Miriam had learned a great deal about God over the many decades since she stood among the reeds on the Nile River bank as a young girl. She had personally experienced the great power of God and she victoriously led more than 1 million Hebrews is a great worship celebration!!

The third time we met Miriam was perhaps a little more than one year later or so. The people have spent nearly a year at Mount Sinai, receiving God’s laws, building the Tent of Meeting, re-organizing their tent city to live by families, clans and tribes, with the cloud of God’s Presence hovering over the Tent in the middle of this great city. The cloud had led this huge throng of people from Mount Sinai to this place, Kadesh, and very soon they’d send the scouts in to explore the land. But first, Miriam and her brother Aaron find pride and jealousy rising up within them and they challenged Moses’ leadership. We saw that in Numbers 12.

You’ll recall God called the three of them to the ‘Tent of Meeting’ and God chastised Aaron and Miriam for their attitudes and leadership discord which was breeding discontent among all the people. God actually struck Miriam with leprosy, and she was confined outside the camp for a week, until God healed her. Miriam was learning even more about Holy God and His high and holy calling to Miriam, Aaron and Moses, each to key roles of leadership among His Hebrew people. Trust, honor, dignity, integrity, respect, were all key to leadership done God’s way, and there was no room for pride, jealousy, slander, malice, resentment, bitterness, gossip and such. Miriam learned a hard but very important lesson that week!

Now, perhaps more than 30 years later, Miriam is an old woman and has died here at Kadesh. Had she been ill? Was it old age, or a heart attack we do not know. It’s a simple, six word statement: “There Miriam died and was buried.” We know nothing about her family. Had she married and been a mother? Was she by now a grandmother or great grandmother? So many hundreds of stories which I’m sure could have been told about Miriam… but the Biblical record is silent. Only six words… “There Miriam died and was buried.”

Perhaps you’re wondering, why would I spend so much time on six simple words? Because, my friends, those very same words will one day be spoken of you and me! Regardless of who you are, where you have lived, what you have accomplished in your lifetime. Regardless if you have authored books or published songs, or you have received great trophies and awards for your accomplishments, or you have a great following of friends and fans through social media, or you have avenues or buildings named after you… these same six words will be spoken of you one day! But your life is so much more than that isn’t it? So was Miriam’s. But the raw truth my dear friends is this… you and I are given the gift of LIFE by God, and only GOD knows how much time He will entrust to each of us for this lifetime here on earth.

Before you were born, God put you together, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, in your mother’s womb… and HE knew you then, according to Psalm 139. More than that, God could see then, every day you would live, and every situation you’d ever find yourself in, and every relationship you’d have, and everything you’d ever accomplish in your life. God’s greatest desire for you and me, while we were still unborn babies, was that during our lives we would come to know God and live our lives to the fullest in a vibrant, dynamic relationship with HIM, depending every day on Him for all things and living for His glory! Now none of us can go back and change anything of our past, but we still have more life to live!

In whatever time we each have left, what does God desire that HE would like you and me to BE and to experience and accomplish for His glory, so that when the time finally comes, it will be with more than six simple words that our lives will be remembered?

My friends, may I give you this powerful Scripture to ponder regarding making our lives count: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise person boast of their wisdom, or the strong person boast of their strength, or the rich person boast of their wealth, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth, for in these I delight, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23,24) Oh that we would each hunger to KNOW God as He longs for us to know Him!

Now let’s each take some time to reflect, deeply, on what you’d like people to remember that your life was all about. Those six words will be spoken over your dead body, one day. How can the rest of your life and mine really count? And if I can help you with that, please write me today my friends.

Today’s Scripture is Numbers 20:1.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

Archived back issues of “Walking with Jesus” and other resources are available by clicking here to open our ‘home page’ (or go to HOME at upper right of this page).

Share with friends. Subscribe below for daily “Walking with Jesus”.