Exodus 16-28
One of the famous sketches from The Muppet Show was the “Mahna mahna” bit that’s featured above. I like the jabs by Waldorf and Statler at the end:
“The question is, ‘what is a mahna mahna?'”
“The question is, ‘who cares?!'”
I’ve always thought it was funny they chose the non-sense word “mahna” for that sketch, because it bears striking resemblance to the word “manna” (pronounced MAN-uh) from our reading today. If you caught the footnote, you’ll know that “manna” was a Hebrew word that basically means, “What is it?” This of course was the first reaction most of the people had when they saw manna for the first time. The phrase then became a word, kinda like our modern “whatchamacallit.”
Manna had no name prior to this because no one had ever seen it before. Indeed, no one has scene it since. It was God’s miraculous provision for the people of Israel for the duration of the forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
And it was weird stuff!
It fell from the sky and settled on the land, much like dew. Each day when the people awoke, they found manna lying on the ground. It was somewhat like bread, and apparently fairly versatile, for you could bake it our boil it.
“You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, sautee it. There’s manna kabobs, manna creole, manna gumbo…”
Notice that each day, the families had to go out and gather enough for their household to eat. No one got too much, and no one went without. They also found out that the manna was a limited time offer: if you kept it over night it rotted and got worms! Then, on Fridays they had to gather twice as much because they could not gather the manna on the Sabbath. In God’s design, the manna would not spoil overnight for the Sabbath portions.
So, God designed a system whereby the people of Israel had to trust God each day to provide for their very survival. We also see Him providing water miraculously throughout the wanderings. Imagine an entire generation growing up for forty years where the only sustenance they knew rained down from God every night! They must have had an enormous trust in God by the time they entered the Promised Land.
Why don’t we trust God like that? I mean, in reality, we’re not that much different from the people in Israel. Everyday that we have food to eat, it comes from God’s provision for us. It may not be the miraculous manna from heaven, but it is no less God’s doing. Yet, how often do we worry about not having enough? How often are we afraid that we won’t get by, that we won’t survive?
My friend Daniel is a missionary to the Romany gypsy people in Romania. He is becoming more and more of a gypsy the longer he lives with them (and such is God’s calling on his life!). He shared with us during a recent visit that he has taken to eating one meal a day, like his people.
That convicts me.
I complain when there’s no sour cream for my taco dinner, which is my third meal of the day! Sometimes we worry when times get tough that we won’t meet our bills. If we honestly looked at our bills, we might realize that if we were truly in trouble we could easily drop the cell phone, cable, internet, DVD-by-mail service; eat out less, maybe sell one of the extra cars; shaving off hundreds of dollars of monthly expenses and still live like kings compared to most of the world!
Let’s take a lesson from the Israelites. Let’s recognize that everything we have comes from God (James 1:17). Let’s be thankful for what we have. And let’s trust God to meet our needs. In order to do that, we have to know what are desires and what are needs. When we do that, we might be ready to let some of the desired things go, so we might help others by supplying their needs.
Words of Reason 