(Talking about the Israelites collecting Manna...)
Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them. Exodus16:19-20
In her last note to me, Janice Taylor, who is a missionary with OM and a good friend asked me to pray for her: "I also want to take some refreshment biblically and do some fresh study, I don’t want to rely on yesterday’s manna."
"Yesterday's Manna."
It was one of those phrases that just grabbed my heart.
How often we are tempted to do this emotionally and spiritually!
We think and hope that what we've done in the past is enough to get through the present.
We rush along in our relationships, not taking the time to find a fresh way to say "I love you", "I value you", or "I appreciate you." We rely on the past to carry us through the struggles of the present.
We do the same in our relationship with God:
"I was saved and studied the Bible a lot back then."
"When I was younger I was very fired up about God."
We seem to develop a been-there-done-that mentality.
But yesterday's manna can rot quickly and unexpectedly.
I guess the Israelites thought that if they could gather a bit extra, they could have a lie-in the next day. But it seems God wanted them to learn to develop a daily habit...
(The beautiful exception was that on the sixth day, they could gather double so that they could focus on God on the Sabbath.)
How old is the spiritual and relational manna you're living on?
Maybe it's time to go out and get some of the fresh stuff!!!
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
