Previous Reflections
REFLECTIONS
October 12, 2008
Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day.”
Exodus 16:4
Manna
The escape seemed long ago now. The freedom they sought was finally theirs—freedom from excessive work days, freedom from unreasonable production demands, freedom from the beatings when quotas went unmet. Surely a better life was ahead.
Travel though had not been easy. No one expected the hardships they had faced. The adversities of the desert seemed greater than the harsh treatment they received as slaves. The arid heat sucked their breath, parched their lips, and dried their tongues. Barren land offered no food, and good water was hard to find. Freedom from bondage seemed worse than the oppression they left behind. What had God done?
Quickly forgotten was how the lives of their firstborn were spared while those around them died. Far from their memory was the escape through the parted sea waters that spared them from an angry army. Distant from their minds was God’s promise to take them to a land of abundance. And blind to their eyes was the provision that sustained them each and every day. Manna they called it. They called it manna because they did not know what it was. But it was there each morning—provision for a single day. There was no need for a storehouse—only needs for today were given with a promise for tomorrow.
Each day of our lives is a form of escape from the troublesome past. We seldom recognize guidance as divine like Passover was. We rarely acknowledge good fortune as God’s providential hand like the parting of the Red Sea waters. But each day we pursue a better life than yesterday as if we can make it so. Each day we seek to make provision for tomorrow as if our own resources were sufficient. And our pursuits almost always bring new trouble we never imagined.
How easily we forget the trouble of the past. How quickly our present problems supplant the quest for a better tomorrow. How easily we dismiss today’s miracles that happen before our eyes. How soon we overlook the gifts of today while in search of a world without trouble. But God does not promise a trouble-free world. God promises to provide what we need to persevere during our time in it—his manna that sustains us, his shield that protects us and his enduring love that secures us.
And those are all we need for today.
“You are the light of the world,”
Richard Ì
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