Keep Hope Alive

It’s almond blossom season again. Two years ago (can you believe it?) we were selecting a new name for our church. We were down to ten choices and Pastor Matt set me to work designing our new logo.

Not knowing yet what our name would be, I chose images suggestive of local agriculture - symbols of life and growth - and created three prototype designs: a valley oak, a seed sprouting, and an almond blossom. Any of them would have worked with our final choice, Living Hope Fellowship, but it was February, almond blossom season. In the dreary late winter, the blossoms beautifully promise the new life of spring and give us hope of a future harvest. So the almond blossom it was.

Last week, in Pastor Heath’s sermon from Numbers 14, we learned that grumbling is the voice of unbelief, a cancer that spreads, leading to destruction and death. I was reminded of the Bible’s only almond blossom story.

You see, Numbers 14 was not the end of Israel’s grumbling. Only two chapters later Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, along with 250 others rebelled against Moses and Aaron. Not content to be God’s chosen people, they wanted to be priests, too. But Moses and Aaron had not chosen their roles, God had. Moses told them plainly that “it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together” (Num. 16:11).

I hope you’ll read Numbers 16-17 for yourself, but the short version is that the three ringleaders and their households were devoured by a massive sinkhole, and the other 250 would-be priests were consumed by fire from the LORD. Yet the very next day the congregation “grumbled against Moses and against Aaron saying, ‘You have killed the people of the LORD’” (Num 16:41). As if mere men could split the earth or bring fire from heaven! Immediately a plague swept like a wave through the crowd, 14,700 of them dropped dead before Aaron’s priestly intercession stopped the carnage.

This is where the almond blossom comes in. God then commanded the 12 tribal heads of Israel to bring to Moses a staff with the name of their tribe written on it. “And,” said the LORD, “the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel . . .” (17:5). Moses put the staffs in the tabernacle, and the next day, “behold, the staff of Aaron, for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds” (17:8). God called Aaron’s staff “a sign for the rebels . . . [to] make an end of their grumblings against me lest they die” (17:10).

All these years later, may our own almond blossom likewise remind us not to allow the living hope that comes through faith in Christ to be destroyed by unbelief in our hearts and grumbling in our midst.