Soul Food Ministries

Please begin by reading Exodus 16:2-21 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.

God had just delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. They had crossed the Red (or Reed) Sea and been saved from Pharaoh's pursuing army. Just before the events in today's text, God had once more delivered them by turning bitter, brackish water found in the wilderness pure and sweet so that they would have water to drink.

Seldom has a group of people had such demonstrations of God's care and grace, but at the very next turn, they are complaining about their hunger; willing to give up their freedom for a little bread and meat eaten in slavery. God again acts to provide for them, in this case with quail and a mysterious bread. This bread falls fresh every morning, but melts with the sun. No matter how much or how little each person gathered, each had just enough to meet their needs. If they tried to hoard it, it became foul and unusable. The Israelites were thus forced to rely upon God to meet their needs anew each day.

The lessons that the Israelites had to learn are timeless ones. They still echo in our modern lives. God is still very much in the freedom business, but learning to live in freedom still takes time as we let go of the old to make room for the new. Getting from oppression, whatever shape that may take, to our own “promised land” can still be a slow process. Often that is because it is so hard for us to give up the familiar, as bad as the familiar may be, for new places of opportunity we do not know. We often carry oppression around within us even after the cause of that oppression is gone. In a perverse way, we may miss its predictable contours just as the Israelites did. It may be a terrible reality, but it is the only one we have known.

Most of our lives are lived in those in-between desert places where we battle overcoming our particular oppressions and try to find new identities in the wholeness God dreams for us. Often that struggle goes on much longer than it needs to because there is something about human nature that forgets again and again that God’s grace comes fresh every day. We need not hoard it up. There is an endless supply! What we need to do is both the simplest and the hardest thing for most of us to do -- just let go of the old and rely on God every day for the new.

Thousands of years after God delivered the children of Israel from oppression God’s grace still comes fresh and sweet every morning—never too much and never too little. There is always enough to meet our real needs, with perhaps some left over to share with others because it will not “keep” from day to day (and need not, for there is always more). The desert is sometimes a place of pain, but it is also a place to learn and grow. We can journey though it to the end because our God goes with us every step of the way!

revclay

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.”

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. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.”

So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?”

And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him -- what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.”

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.”

And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.

When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.’”

The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.

But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them.

Morning by morning they gathered it, as much as each needed; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.