The Proper Way That Mankind Is To Eat 'Manna' For Their Meal!?!

       Update:  claims of manna falling regularly at a certain 7th Day Adventist Church in Angola, Africa on Wednesdays and Fridays are easy to find now on the internet, along with videos offered as proof.  Very interesting!!

     When Moses led the Israelites into the land of wandering, their 'land of Nod', which was mostly the Sinai Peninsula it would seem, there was a certain small problem:  this was a very bare and desolate land.  It is still a bare and desolate land today.  And there were a great many Israelites with mouths to feed. There were over 1 million Israelite slaves that exited from Egypt by crossing the Red Sea when it parted by the hand of God so that they might flee from Pharaoh's pursuing army.  So, how do you feed 1 million people in a land that has very close to nothing to eat?  To those Israelites...to any group of men, women, and children in that situation...it might have looked pretty grim.  How would they live?  How would they feed their children?  Did God bring them out here to die?  It must have been on their mind.

     But then came a very great miracle from God Almighty, their maker, protector, and provider.  Small little bits of bread fell from the sky.  There were so many of these little bits of bread that they could go out and gather them and have a meal each day.  But it was a very odd sort of bread.  For one thing, it fell in the night or morning and all of the little bits of bread that were not gathered up early began to stink and rot as the sun came out and began to blaze, the heat of the day coming on.  But what you gathered did not rot...apparently only the portion left behind on the ground rotted.

     And, manna was not to be gathered on Saturday, the Sabbath.  You had to gather twice the normal amount on Friday so that you did not have to gather any on Saturday.  That was the rule God gave them.  Saturday was not for working.  Saturday was for resting and communing with God Almighty in prayer or singing or worship.   Saturday was Holy...reserved for God and things related to God.  The slaves had that day off, and even the beasts they owned had that day off.  

     What did 'manna' mean?  It is a name made from the Hebrew words for 'What is this?'  You can well imagine that the Israelites were quite perplexed when little bits of edible bread fell from heaven, which it did for just about exactly 40 years as they wandered under God's direction, camping at times and relocating to a new place to camp at times.

     What did it look like?  It looked like 'coriander seed' the Bible says.  It was not coriander seed...or you may know it as cilantro seed...but apparently manna resembled it in size and shape, though manna was some type of bread.

Coriander Seed, which is used even today in cooking.

  And so, that is how God fed the Israelites for 40 straight years.  That is not to say that they did not eat other things.  But manna was their bread staple, and it literally fell from heaven and landed on the ground among them and around them in sufficient quantities to feed the vast hordes of former Israelite slaves who were now being trained and disciplined to be 'the people of God' that would enter His promised land that we today know as the nation of Israel for the most part.  

  How did you harvest it?  Well, they went about and gathered it.  You can look at coriander seed and pretty much know that this was done on one's hands and knees.  It was not as easy as reaching down and picking up a loaf of bread off of the ground.  These were little particles of bread.  So you were down on your knees (a humble body position, a position of prayerful humility if you will) as they gathered this bread which gave them life.  I guess that it is fair to call it bread from Heaven which gave them life.  Though about 1400 years later Jesus would come, and He would call Himself the bread of life which came down from Heaven.  And some years after Jesus was crucified, died, then rose again there came 'the Bible', which is the word of God, which is 'spiritual bread for mankind to eat' as the scriptures say.

  And so, are we to think of all of this and conclude that the right way - at least one right way - for us to read the Bible is day by day, a little each day, in an attitude of humility, gathering it in because we know that the Bible holds the Words of Life?  I personally suspect that it is.  Our life here on Earth is our time of trial.  In the Bible the number 40 is almost always associate with 'a time of trial', and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for exactly 40 years (40 years to the day the Bible tells us) before they emerged from the Sinai wilderness to cross the Jordan River (which parted for them just as the Red Sea had once done, though most who saw the Red Sea part were dead from old age when they crossed the Jordan) and enter the promised land very close to the location of the Canaanite city of Jericho. 

  How about us...will we ever see some of this actual manna?  We might!  Peter says that there were three things placed inside of the Ark of the Covenant:  the tablets of the law, Aaron's budded staff from the showdown for the high priesthood, and a golden jar of manna.  So if God ever decides to show us the Ark of the Covenant and then allows its contents to be viewed by us then we might see some actual manna.  It would probably be perfectly preserved by God in such a case I believe.

     What did manna taste like?  The Bible actually mentions its taste.  Before cooking it tasted like wafers of bread made with honey we are told.  It was a miracle...a true miracle food though all food is a miracle quite honestly.  But...even though it was a miracle food that fell from heaven the Israelites complained about all of the foods from 'back home' in Egypt that they no longer got to eat.  Variety...I guess we all like variety.

  So that is manna, which symbolically might be like humble Jesus (did you know that the origin of the word humble has to do with grinding things into small bits) who came down to live like a man and even allowed himself to be mistreated by men though He was the true Son of God and had such power at His beck and call as we could not even imagine.  Or it might be like humble Christians partaking each morning of the Bible's good words before going out to face their day; a bit each day to carry within us as spiritual food.  It's possible, anyway!