Day Nine
Exodus 16:15
When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.
Long gone is the single stain of forbidden juice from that fallen fruit, the fruit that was grabbed, was stolen, the fruit that produced suffering and woe. Now The Lord has given you something to eat. The whole house of Israel looks around, exasperated, hot, disappointed about how The Exodus has turned out not to be a lovely holiday along the Mediterranean with the cool sea breeze and the luxurious lunch of leaks roasted with a hint of garlic and a little pleasant glass of wine. Rather than that you have your life but not much else besides heat, thirst, and a few thousand other quarrelsome women and children and their irritating husbands. So clearly, you accounted to yourself, The Lord brought us out here to suffer and die. And, apparently, you're not supposed to complain about it either.
So, even though your terrible attitude has made Moses and God thoroughly angry, The Lord sends food anyway. As the morning light falls over the dry land, compressed between quiet and forgiving layers of dew, there is Manna, Bread, from heaven.
It isn't want you want. It doesn't feel nice and satisfying. You get tired of it almost immediately. But it's what God has given. Can you accept it from his hand? Can you wait for the cool and the beauty and the leaks and be satisfied with him now? If you can say yes, then you also can praise The Lord.
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