As I’m reading through Exodus again this spring, I started thinking about the Israelites gathering manna six days a week for the duration of their wilderness wanderings. How long did it take them each morning to pick up about two quarts of the fine flakes for each person? (Multiply that by the 600,000 men plus women and children mentioned in Exodus 12:37!) Certainly, there was grumbling about the inconvenience and lack of variety, along with groaning about aching backs.
The manna foreshadowed Jesus. “I am the Bread of Life;
whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never
thirst” (John 6:35). The Israelites couldn’t just stock up for a month or stop
gathering the manna. They needed the daily grace of God’s provision for them.
We too need God’s grace every day for forgiveness, sanctification, and maturity.
Jesus taught us to pray for our “daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). We receive God’s
provision through Jesus’s death on the cross and His intercession for us, as well
as through Scripture, prayer, and gathering with the Body of Christ on a
regular basis. We can’t just accept Christ as Savior and expect to live and
grow in our faith any more than we could eat one meal and expect it to last a
lifetime. The provision is there if we will make the effort to gather it.
It’s curious that Exodus reports, “They gathered [manna],
some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered
much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack”
(16:17-18). This is reminiscent of Jesus’s miraculous feeding of five thousand
with five loaves and two fish in John 6, the act that preceded His statement
that He is the Bread of Life. The crowd followed Him because they wanted to be
filled without expending any effort and without understanding that Jesus wanted
to give them something far better than daily sustenance.
In our consumer-oriented society, how often do we settle
for a few fringe benefits of faith rather than digging deep for our daily
nourishment from the Bread of Life? How many in our churches expect to be spoon
fed when (or if) they show up?
Let us press on to maturity, “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:13-14). Let’s make it our constant practice to gather manna daily from God’s word and through interaction with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave
you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the
world” (John 6:32-33).
© 2021 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.
