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In Manna and Mercy: A Brief History of God’s Unfolding Promises to Mend the Entire Universe (Augsburg Fortress 2018), pastor and cartoonist Daniel Erlander calls the 40-year period of the Israelites in the wilderness the “wilderness school,” where the people learn about being faithful to God. In Erlander’s words, those lessons include: “Lesson One: God God Gives Manna for All” and “Lesson Two: Hoarding Stinks.”
From the gift of manna, the people learn that “all food is God’s. In fact, everything is God’s. We own nothing. We can trust God for daily bread” (p. 7). God gives everyone enough for each day. Some want more – either out of fear or out of a desire to gain power from what they’ve accumulated. When people take too much, the manna grows worms and spoils. It starts to stink.
The lessons here are also for us: Trust God for daily bread. Hoarding our food (and other things) stinks. When we share more, when we take and waste less, we become part of the way God provides daily bread for all.
This message is excerpted from “Scripture and nature: Teachers of faith” by Sara Olson-Smith in the March/April 2024 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Toyohiko Kagawa, renewer of society, 1960.