The beginning of the year means resolutions for better health. Your inbox is probably full of suggestions to help you achieve that.
What if you got an email advertising a product that was guaranteed to be nutritionally complete, with a delightful taste. Something that could be prepared in different ways. Remarkably, it would be delivered to your home ““ wherever you live, even if you”‘re traveling at the time ““ in just the right amount for your needs, postage free. In fact, the product itself would be free!
Who wouldn”‘t want that? Well, thousands of years ago our Israelite ancestors hated such a deal. It was called manna. It was food without work or investment, nutrition without measurements.
In Deuteronomy chapter eight, Moses said some surprising things about manna: two things about its purpose and one thing about its result.
While we might think that its primary purpose was nutritional sustenance ““ perhaps, even further, a visible demonstration of God”‘s daily concern for people ““ Moses identified it quite differently. “He gave you manna,” Moses said in 8:16, “to humble you and to test you.”
Humbling ““ how was picking up flake-like bread humbling? A whole generation of Israelite men popped their knuckles for years and put away their bows and butcher knives and any other “bring home the bacon” tools they had.
A test? Manna was that indeed. It was monotonous and self-regulating. The Israelites represented it as a tyrannical regimen, without choice nor creativity.
And each Israelite who lived by it stayed suspended in divine provision, delicately balanced between the worms and the dawn: the rotting of gluttonous desire and the inevitable provision that each rising sun would bring.
Finally, what did Moses say was the result of overcoming the humiliation and the trial of manna?
“So that in the end, it might go well for you.” This is the third-phase resolution of the contradiction of manna. If you, dear brother or sister, are suffering under what our dear friend and colleague Dr. Mike Strawn calls “the manna syntax,” take heart. Your heart, soul, and life will be fed if you can pass the humbling test of manna.
