Breakfast That Fell from the Sky

Exactly one month after they marched out of Egypt, God's people rolled up their tents under the palm trees of Elim and walked on into the Wilderness of Sin. (Sin was only the name of the place, though there was about to be plenty of the other kind.)

The bread they had carried out of Egypt was gone. Stomachs rumbled all over camp, and the whole crowd stomped over to Moses and Aaron.

"We wish the LORD had let us die in Egypt!" they shouted. "Back there we sat beside pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. You brought us out here to starve us!"

(In Egypt they had been slaves, beaten if they worked too slowly. Somehow everyone remembered the stew and forgot the whips.)

The LORD said to Moses, "I am going to rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people will go out and gather enough for that day. That way I will test whether they will follow my teaching."

"The LORD has heard your grumbling," Moses and Aaron told the people. "You are grumbling against him, not us. Tonight you will have meat, and in the morning you will see his glory."

That evening quail covered the camp, and there was meat for supper. In the morning, when the dew dried, the ground was covered with thin white flakes, fine as frost.

"Man hu?" people asked, poking at the flakes. That means "What is it?", and so they called it manna.

"It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat," said Moses. "Gather what each person needs, and keep none until morning."

Out they went with jars and baskets. Some scooped up heaps and some only handfuls, but when they measured it at home, every family had exactly enough. It tasted like thin crackers made with honey. When the sun got hot, whatever was left on the ground melted away.

Some people hid a bit of manna in the tent anyway, just in case. By morning it was crawling with worms, and it STANK! Moses was angry with them.

On the sixth day the baskets came home with twice as much. "Tomorrow is the Sabbath, a day of rest for the LORD," said Moses. "Save half, because tomorrow the ground will be empty." In the morning the saved manna was fresh. No worms. No smell.

On the seventh day a few people went out anyway and found nothing.

"How long will these people refuse to keep my commands?" the LORD said to Moses. "I have given you the Sabbath. On the seventh day, let everyone stay home."

So the people rested. Moses had a jar of manna kept for their great-grandchildren to see. For forty years God's people ate manna, all the way to the edge of the promised land.

The manna came six mornings a week, and it never kept for long. It filled people for one day, and the next day they were hungry again. Everyone who ate it, even Moses, grew old and died.

The jar of manna sat in its safe place while prophets came and went, promising a feast where the hungry would eat and never run short. God had another bread from heaven ready.

In Bethlehem, a town whose name means House of Bread, a baby was born and laid in a feeding trough. He grew up and fed five thousand hungry people in a wild place, with baskets left over. The next day the crowd came back. "Our fathers ate manna in the desert," they said. "Bread from heaven!"

"I am the bread of life," said Jesus. "I came down from heaven. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry."