EXODUS 16
31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” 33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” 34 As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.) – Exodus 16:31-36
EXODUS 16 REMEMBRANCE OF THE MANNA
A poem by ILMA inspired by these verses
The Lord faithfully provided his people in the wilderness with manna
It nourished them all those times until they arrived in Canaan
God wanted them to remember this provision of the manna
They were to pass on this memory to the generations to come.
During those forty years in the wilderness, the Lord provided the Israelites with bread from heaven called manna. They didn’t go hungry for four decades and God was faithful to provide for their needs. Can you imagine being one of Israelites, eating that bread day in and day out for forty years? Would they have died from hunger if this manna wasn’t provided for them? They would have died and not survived all those forty years. I think God wanted them to remember that without his grace and provision, they would have died. The Lord wants them to remember the giver of this manna, their covenant God.
At the beginning it was probably a novelty for them to be provided with bread to eat daily but later on, it must have been tiring to have the same thing over and over again for forty years. And because they are humans, they will eventually grumble when their needs and cravings are not satisfied.
REFLECTION
- How can we prevent taking for granted what we were provided for by God?
