Numbers 20:1-5: in context

Near the end of the wilderness years, the people come to Kadesh, and Miriam dies there. Then, finding no water, the congregation gathers against Moses and Aaron and quarrels with them. We wish we had died with our brothers before the LORD, they say; why have you brought us into this wilderness to die? Why did you make us leave Egypt for this evil place, with no grain, figs, vines, or water? Their complaint echoes, almost word for word, the complaints of the generation before them, who had died in the wilderness for their unbelief.

What is sobering here is that this new generation complains just as their fathers did. The older generation had murmured and rebelled at every hardship, wishing they had died, blaming Moses, and had perished in the wilderness for their unbelief. Now their children, having grown up watching this, face a new hardship, a lack of water, and respond in exactly the same way, with the same complaint, the same wish they had died, the same blame. They had not learned from their fathers' faithlessness and its consequences; they repeated it. The pattern of unbelief and complaint passed from one generation to the next. This searches a tendency we all share: to repeat the faithlessness of those before us rather than learn from it. We watch previous generations, or our own past, respond to hardship with complaint, unbelief, and blame, and see the consequences; and yet, facing our own hardships, we can repeat the same faithlessness, murmuring and doubting as they did, having learned nothing from their example. The new generation in the wilderness complained just as their fathers had, though they had seen where it led. Do not be like your fathers, the psalmist warns, a stubborn and rebellious generation. We are called to learn from the faithlessness of those before us, not to repeat it. And there is more to learn from: the faithfulness of God. This new generation, like the old, faced a lack of water; but God had provided water before, again and again, in the wilderness. They could have remembered his past provision and trusted him for this new need. Instead they complained as though he had never provided. These things, Paul says, happened as examples for us, that we might not do as they did. The record of past faithlessness, and of God's faithfulness, is given us to learn from. This calls us to learn from the past rather than repeat its faithlessness. The new generation in the wilderness repeated their fathers' complaining and unbelief, though they had seen where it led; and we too can repeat the faithlessness of those before us, murmuring and doubting at hardship as they did. Let us learn instead: from the faithlessness of the past, not to repeat it; and from God's past faithfulness, to trust him in present trials. When we face hardship, let us not complain and doubt as the generations before us did, but remember God's faithfulness and trust him, learning from the past rather than repeating its faithlessness.

When I face hardship, do I repeat the faithlessness of those before me, or of my own past, murmuring and doubting and blaming as they did, though I have seen where such faithlessness leads, and can the new generation in the wilderness, who complained just as their fathers had, warn me to learn from the past rather than repeat it, remembering both the faithlessness that I should not imitate and the faithfulness of God that I should trust, so that I meet my trials with faith rather than the complaint of the generations before me?