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A woman in her eighties, rigid and conservative, had become cynical.  She thought everything modern was bad and every new change was a disaster.  She complained to her minister, “Pastor, it’s a good time to be dead.”  Now few of you would be pleased at being compared with this glum person.  But most of us, if we are honest, do not have much room to brag.  We know that one of the things we do best-and perhaps most frequently-is grumble.  And our grumbling tends to spill over into everything else.  God may have delivered us from sin’s bondage alright, but we still find plenty of things we don’t like.  Let’s face it-we are a bunch of grumblers.  Hardly rising above negativism, we complain about work, school, traffic, television, government, politics, church, relationships and on it goes.

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul challenges people who have received God’s grace to live up to their calling.  Paul says, “Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” (1;27), and “Do all things without grumbling” (2:14).  Grumbling is not very flattering!  One old story tells of a hound dog sitting in a country store howling his head off.  A stranger came in and said to the storekepper, “What’s the matter with that dog!”  The storekeeper said, “He’s sitting on a cocklebur,”  Then, why doesn’t he get off?”  “Because,” said the storekeeper, “he’d rather howl!

So often that’s true of us, isn”’t it?  We’d rather grumble, and it’s not a very inviting picture.  Like the Israelites of old, we forget the graciousness of God in our lives.

Grumbling is a sign of B.C.- our life before Christ!  A man had just completed his transaction at the bank.  The teller said to him, “Have a nice day.” To which, the man growled this reply, “I’ve already made alternative plans.” 

In our own personal experience, this type of response is a sign of B.C.  Or at least, it’s a sign of our initial beginnings in our life with Christ.  A woman once came to writer Ralph Waldo Emerson and said, “that the world was coming to an end”.  Emerson replied, “That’s all right, I can get along without it.”  And so can we-especially if it’s the world of our old grumbling nature.