Provision and Discipline
I’m pretty shopping-averse but one place I do like to browse is the international section of a grocery store, or better yet, get off the tourist track when travelling and experience a local grocery store. Before doing that in Arizona, my only experience of churros was seeing what Taco Bell serves. The range of churros, not to mention the quality, was amazing.
When the children of Israel finally arrived in the promised land they had forty years of travel behind them, forty years in which to unlearn a longing to return to Egypt, to break a desire for the familiar, long for the past even when the past housed horror. Many of us suffer from neophobia.
The familiar travel food, the manna provided by God’s hand, sustaining them in the journey ceased once the people arrived in Canaan. There, they ate the produce of Canaan. Was that a relief? Something fresh and new after decades of a steady manna diet? Or was there any resentment at the disappearance of free-for-the-taking sustenance and a return to earning one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow? Was there a temptation to look for the next hand out as superior to self reliance?
As I look back over my life, I can see seasons where God provided, through the generosity of others, what I needed when I needed it. And then when I didn’t need it, the help dried up. Sometimes it seemed almost miraculous. Maybe you see this too, people God brings into your life, just when you need them; and people you are able to give to turning up when you’ve got something, some act of service, some word of kindness, some material assistance, just when you are needed.
These manna experiences: God giving us what we need when we need it, and then giving us the gift of participating in providing for ourselves and others when that is what is best for us. How beautiful is the provision and the discipline of our Heavenly Father, to us his children.
Lord, give me what I need this day and open my eyes to see where I might be the conveyance of your generosity to others. To you, giver of every perfect gift, be all honour, glory and praise, world without end, Amen.
Diane Walker