God Provides Daily Bread

Exodus 16


No bread in the desert.  No meat to eat in the wilderness.  The Israelites were hungry and complained saying it would be better to be slaves in Egypt rather than following the Lord through the wilderness to the promised land.  The Lord heard them complaining.  He provided daily bread, but no more than daily except for on the day before the Sabbath so that they would have enough to sustain them on the Sabbath.  He proved bread in the morning and quail for meat each evening.  But, some people tried to hoard it.  They did not understand that the Lord was trying to teach them to trust him and not the rulers of this world for their daily bread.  The extra bread that they tried to collect and save up for themselves spoiled so that worms lived in it.   For forty years the Lord provided this daily bread to his children.

Give us this day our daily bread.  We pray it all the time.  I remember Howard and my first few years of marriage.  Wow! Talk about broke!  He was a young Marine and I will tell you that at that time, even though I worked as well, there was not much of an income.  I had a budget of $20.00 for groceries for the month. Before I went shopping, I would do a whole months menu just so not a penny would be wasted.  Sometimes we ended up short.  For some reason, I didn't think about applying for food stamps.  I think I may have felt they were for those who had less than we.  After all, there was always something to eat on the table.  Suppers on those last days of the month sometimes were pretty sparse.  They consisted of things like pancakes without eggs, basically flour and water with a  little margarine and sugar sprinkled on top or homemade bean soup.  We ate a lot of homemade bean soup.  But, we ate.  We were provided for.  Even though at times there was no meat for the table, there was always bread - sometimes homemade.  When I had no yeast or money to purchase it with, the bread may ended up being something more like tortillas or pancakes, but we ate.  God provided for our daily needs.

Do we really trust the Lord to take care of our daily needs or do we want more? Are we willing to sell ourselves back into the bondage of people, places, things?  In whom do we trust to care for us:  God or the world?  Who or what is our God?