Manna is a pretty important part of the story of the Exodus.  When the people didn’t have enough to eat on their wilderness wanderings, God sent manna.

The word manna means roughly, “what is it?” in Hebrew.  Manna was ancient Israel’s equivalent of ‘mystery meat.’  Manna kept the Hebrews alive as they trudged from slavery towards freedom, but they didn’t relish it.

Yet manna was bread from heaven, the food of angels.  It was a sign of God’s love and providence.  It was also only good for a day.  You couldn’t store up provisions; you had to trust that it would be there day after day.

Manna is bread for which we do not toil.

The fate of humanity since our expulsion from Eden has been to earn our bread ‘by our sweat.’  Manna is not the bread we sweat for.  It’s the bread of grace.

Maybe that’s why the Hebrews complained about it.  It’s hard to know that your life depends on something you didn’t produce or earn, something you couldn’t make no matter how hard you try.  They resented the daily reminder of their fragile vulnerability, their absolute dependence on God’s kindness.

We still pray for manna: our daily bread.  In our moments of spiritual honesty, we know that every day we eat the bread of angels; we are constantly dependent on bread for which we did not toil.

Our diet consists of manna, which daily reminds us that we are not sufficient to fulfil our deepest needs. 

Manna is the hard grace that insists that we admit our emptiness if we ever hope to be filled.

Prayer:  Look, if I could do this myself, I would.  But I’m hungry again, so I’m back…