Enough Just for the Day

ENOUGH JUST FOR THE DAY (September 19, 1999)

There is an old saying, "what good is it to complain? Complaining will get you nowhere."

Well, that's not always true. The children of Israel were utterly sick of their wanderings, they were hungry, they were in virtual revolt against their leaders, Moses and Aaron, and out there in the wilderness they were beginning to think the Egypt they had left behind, with its demeaning slavery, was suddenly looking pretty good. "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt," they said.

Forgotten for the moment were 400 years of slavery, of cruel oppression in the ghettos created by Pharaoh, of the requirement to make bricks out of straw, of the forced labor to build for Ramses his magnificent palaces in Thebes and Luxur, the denial of their rights of citizenship. Now they were hungry in the wilderness and they wanted to go back. Gone was the jubilation of the songs of Miriam and Hannah: "The horse and his rider He hath thrown into the sea." We read that last week. Now there was only the song of complaint. And how quickly it turns.

I thought of this recently when the terrorist blasts rocked Moscow and a Russian was quoted saying that all of this was the fault of democracy. The slavery of communism, with its very controlled society, suddenly looked sparkling good. They did not like what the Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel called "The Insecurity of Freedom".

It is truly remarkable that God does not become angry. Instead, God does respond to their complaint: he will "rain bread" on the people, enough for each day. On the sixth day there will be twice as much, but none on the seventh, the Sabbath. The bread is manna. And today in the Sinai desert in certain months of the year there is a sweet, honey like juice from the tamarisk tree, which is a yellowish-white flake or ball. I saw this when I spent a week in the Sinai in 1976 tenting under the stars and climbing Mt. Sinai in the early morning. This little sticky stuff disintegrates when the sun comes up but in the cold of the morning it congeals. The Bedouin use it to bake bread. Ancient Arabs believed it fell from heaven with the dew.

We should note the naturalness of God's response. In the time of the escape from Egypt there were many mighty signs - the passing of the "angel of death," the waters of the Red Sea rolling back, the pillar of fire and the cloud by day - all "supernatural" manifestations of the Divine. But now God answers the people's complaint with this sticky little substance which must be gathered quickly in the morning while it is cold or else it disappears, not much to look at, but fully part of the natural order of the world, coming out of a tamarisk tree, which you can still see in the Sinai desert.

How many times one hears of people complaining that God wasn't fair to them. Why didn't they get such and such in life? Why wasn't God "there for them"? But in fact God was there for them, perhaps in the natural friendship of someone near at hand, of the touch of a mother, or a father's loyalty, or the right word spoken at the right time by someone just out of the blue. We are so used to thinking that the only way God speaks is through these thunderclaps of power and displays of glory, but here, and in fact in so many times throughout Scripture God speaks in the natural, not supernatural.

If the provisions of God in the wilderness are only in the supernatural and extraordinary, then that is how people will tend to look for God. And they will go searching for God only in these mountain-top extraordinary experiences. Then if there is an absence of these extraordinary events, people will think God has abandoned them. How often that happens! But if we teach people to look for God in the ordinary and in the daily round of life, and see that God is the one who bestows these blessings daily, then we teach a different way of understanding God. This is why we like to teach children to say a prayer of thanks before every meal. Then they will be able to see God at work in the very ordinariness of things. As St. Teresa said, "God is at work among the pots and pans."

In this last week with the floods and rains how often people by the thousands might have said that God had abandoned them. Instead, again and again, we have heard people say God was with them, in the timely appearance of rescuers in boats, or in the heroic work of fire fighters or other rescuers. When the men on the tugboat were rescued at sea by sailors on the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier they were grateful beyond words, and to a man they thanked both God and those men.

With the tragic shootings of the youth at worship in a Baptist church I was amazed that not one of the young people said, "how could God let this happen?" Instead, they focused on the heroism of several of the young people in helping others.

To the children of Israel God specified that the manna would be just enough for the day. Surely Jesus had this in mind when he taught us to pray "give us this day our daily bread." Daily, because we are not to be greedy. Daily, because there is to be no hoarding of God's gifts - the Bible consistently opposes greed, amassing more than is necessary. Enough just for the day because it is only in this way would the people of

God know their true dependence on God. Why did Jesus say that it is so hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God? Is it not because they often do not know their true dependence on God, or they believe they have no need of God for it is by their own efforts, they think, they have put bread on the table, and they have no need to be thankful?

Enough just for the day. Many people think they can "feed" on God and then "store" up that spiritual knowledge in some heavenly granary without seeking a fresh experience. They worship occasionally and then they wonder why their spiritual life goes flat. They do not understand why their religion seems worthless, or why they go from one commitment to another to another, instead of growing daily in dependence on God. Our experience with God can get as stale, we need to come again and again.

Christ said, "I am the bread of life." For sure, when he said that his hearers remembered the most important bread they ever knew, the bread in the wilderness, supplied daily, and needed daily, not just once in a while, but all the time. This is why St. Paul, writing from prison to the Philippians, could say "for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' Christ, like the manna in the wilderness, was all he needed.

God gave the children of Israel manna one day at a time because he wanted them to learn to trust him one day at a time. When people have bad things happen to them they often say, "We'll just take it one day at a time". The Scripture suggests we should modify that: "Trust God, one day at a time." It is the same message Jesus later taught: "Put away anxious thoughts….do not be anxious about tomorrow…." The Scots say "don't fash yourselves". Of course, there is a place for planning and looking ahead, but that does not mean giving ourselves over to endless worry. We do not ask for provision for the distant future, or for a blueprint of the way we should go in years ahead. God does not deal with us in that way. Instead, he leads us step by step, day by day, as we trust in that way, we find Him adequate.

John Henry Newman wrote:
"Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me."