I have a gorgeous friend who called me a couple of weeks ago. She shared with me a precious truth that I have been pondering in my heart for the last few days. She spent 14 years as one of the main worship leaders in a large church but felt called with her husband to go to Eastern Europe for a season. Some people thought she was mad and told her so. She described waiting for her house to sell as a time when she felt God’s grace was sufficient for her, even though she felt weak and in some ways, alone. But she looks back on that time as incredibly seminal now, a time when she drew closer to God and heard His voice clearly. I can identify. It is in times when we lean on God the most that He can show Himself to be all we need. His grace is sufficient for today.

I have read the whole Bible a number of times, but sometimes get the feeling as I read certain passages that I have NEVER seen a particular verse before. (Maybe you get that too?) This morning I read the amazing story in Exodus 16 of God’s provision of Manna for the Israelites in the wilderness. These were the verses of revelation today:

“Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the desert when I brought you out of Egypt.’ ”
33 So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD to be kept for the generations to come.” (Exodus 16:32-33)

I read that and thought ‘WOAH! Hang on a minute! God told the children of Israel not to gather more Manna than they needed. When some of them tried to, by morning it had filled with maggots and rotten away. The only change to this rule was on the Sabbath when they were told to rest and collect two lots of Manna the day before. On this day, miraculously the manna survived for two whole days.
And yet, here is Moses commanding Aaron to KEEP some in a jar to show generations of descendants how God had provided for them. Now I’m sorry, but they didn’t have ‘Dead Sea Tupperware’ then, there were no fridges, or any way of preserving the honey waffle flakes even OVERNIGHT. But here is God allowing something fragile and transient to be preserved for years as a testimony of His goodness. That is amazing isn’t it? The Manna in the jar was like a museum piece with a label on it saying, ‘God is faithful. Look what He gave us!’

I think sometimes we can try to cling on to the ‘Manna’ God provides instead of to the God that provides it. We find a friend or a church group or a good business client and hold onto them for dear life, forgetting where our blessings come from. In clinging on so tightly, we squeeze the life out of the blessing, idolise it or allow it to become too important. We hold on to the past, stopping us from trusting God for the future.

So what is your ‘Manna’ that you are trying to stash away? What are you trying to cling onto for comfort at this time? Maybe you should check the ‘best-before’ date on that. You may find that item has rotten.