Manna and Grace

Grace--What is it?  I don't know exactly how to define grace, or what parameters to set on God's favor.  How do we see grace, know what is grace, thank God for grace?  The Israelite asked this question too, "What is it?" while looking at manna.  Gifts from heaven pour down each day--manna and grace.  We are called to collect them, to wonder at them, to ask, "What is this?"  The next day, they disappear.  They go bad.  Don't worry though, we are not left hungry.  We are given more instead.  Is this what grace is like?  Manna from heaven appearing on the ground--strange, confusing, foreign to us.  It is our sustenance for the day, if we can only realize it is good for eating.  It will carry us to tomorrow, but we can’t too tightly grip.  Poof.  Collect to hoard and it’s gone.  God’s grace can’t be saved for later, for security or promises of future.  It must be felt right now.

I think there are a great number of us who are spiritually hungry in our culture because we are unable to see the grace-manna that can fill us up.  "What is it?  Whatever it is, it is not good for eating!"  We forget the goodness of manna and that it comes from God, so we gorge ourselves on things that are not sustaining.  We live a life full of scarcity, thinking that grace and manna are in short supply.  So we hoard, hide, grab, and take everything that we can.  We fear that if we aren't careful, if we don't save enough it will be gone.  What's more is we collect the wrong things.  We desire and hoard, "junk food" that leaves us empty.  We eat things like success, money, fame, societal approval, popularity, security.  We wonder why we still are hungry.  Why there is never enough.  We attribute the good things in our lives to ourselves instead of seeing them as manna, flowing from heaven. 

But don’t worry if you've been short sighted.  If you have lived life thinking, "I am not enough," "what I have is not enough," "I will always be hungry."  We haven't lost out on our opportunity for manna-grace.  Tomorrow has it’s own manna too.  It might look a little different. It is not under our control.  But how beautiful that it shows up again and again and again.  The fullness of God's manna.  The fullness of God's grace.  Amen