At week’s end, let’s turn to a Hebrew Bible passage appointed for Sunday, about the “bread of life” we’ve been discussing. The story of how the Israelites were fed during their 40-year sojourn in the wilderness after escaping Egypt is what the people in our gospel reading were reminding Jesus about as they asked him to produce “magic bread.”
The account of the Exodus contains a lot of whining. No matter how the Lord provides for the people, soon enough they come back with their grievances, often revolving around food. “Oh, the onions and leeks we had in Egypt!” they wail, conveniently forgetting their harsh existence as slaves and day laborers, from which they were delivered when God walled up the waters of the Red Sea so they could escape Pharaoh’s pursuing army. Here they are again:
The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
Does God turn away from their ingratitude? No – God provides, extraordinarily, but with a twist:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.
The instruction is that they are to gather only enough of the manna for each day, and not to try to save it to the next day. They have to trust in God’s provision each day. Sure enough, they try to save it and it goes rancid and buggy. God provides enough on the sixth day to get them through the Sabbath, but otherwise, it’s just for each day, and more than enough.
And they have trouble recognizing this flaky substance on the ground, said to look like coriander, as food. But they soon learn they can make flour from it. Bread from heaven has been provided, not on their timetable and not as they expected it to look, but there all the same.
God wants us to experience his blessings daily as well – and they often don’t look like what we’re expecting. That’s why I’m learning to expect blessing in general, and try not to get specific about it. Most of my greatest blessings are things I wouldn’t even have known to look for.
And we are to expect blessing each day. I challenge anyone to get to the end of a day and not be able to name a single blessing from God, some unlooked-for gift, whether from God or another person, or uncanny timing, an insight given or progress made. Even in perilous times, God remains in the blessing business.
To expect blessing every day, without storing up gifts from the day before; to learn to recognize blessing when it looks different what we envisioned – these are skills we need on our journey into faith. As we become able to live into of these graces, we are more available for God to give others daily bread through us.
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