Gathering Manna

The Lord GOD has given me 

the tongue of those who are taught,

that I may know how to sustain with a word 

him who is weary.

Morning by morning he awakens;

he awakens my ear

to hear as those who are taught.

The Lord GOD has opened my ear,

and I was not rebellious;

I turned not backward. 

— Isaiah 50:4-5

This is from Isaiah's revelation of Messiah as the Servant which crescendos in chapter 53.  It is easy to see how it applies to Jesus, and one might think that this particular passage was upon His mind often as He rose in the early hours of the day to pray alone with His Father.  Perhaps the last lines reverberated in His soul, too, during that last night in Gethsemane.  

For us, it is a call to hear.  Consider, though, that it says, "The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught."  This is not a function of human knowledge, education, and intellectual capacity.  God simply pours His grace into His chosen vessels.  We can get in a position to receive, but we cannot claim an acquistion.  Knowing "how to sustain with a word him who is weary" does not come from obtaining a PhD in counseling or communications.  We often see family members, friends, and others close to us who are suffering, going astray, lost in mazes of their own making.  We want to help them, but we find much of the time that our best efforts fail.  Sometimes we even make matters worse.  There is only one Helper, one perfect Comforter.  It is His word the suffering and lost need to hear. 

My wife and I had gone over to the west side of the Metroplex one Sunday afternoon to visit our friends who pastored a church there.  Naturally we went to their service that evening and my friend preached.  At the end, he gave an invitation and a young couple came forward to the mourners' benches.  Pastor called for his wife and my wife to come down and pray with the young lady while I and one of his deacons went to pray with the man.  I had been taught the "Roman Road" from childhood as a standard, formulaic means of leading someone to "salvation". 

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23); the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ (Romans 6:23); God demonstrates His love for in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8);  whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13); and, finally, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved (Romans 10:9-10).  

 It was drilled in my head until I can do it in my sleep.  All that is true and good, but it should have been obvious to a blind hog that this couple, and especially the young man, was in serious and desperate pain.  It was one of those rare occasions where I was in the right place at the right time with a word for somebody, and I suddenly knew who it was.  Except that our beloved brother, the deacon, rushed in flapping his big Ryrie Study Bible, bound and determined to drag this poor boy down the Roman Road, regardless of what the Holy Spirit wanted.  After all, hadn't the same Spirit inspired Paul to write the book of Romans in the Original King James?

It is one of the beauties of the story of Christ as recorded in the Gospels that He always discerned the real need of the individual person to whom He ministered.  Now and then He would ask the person to state his or her need specifically, but I tend to think that was more to get the person focused than it was to inform Jesus.  The Lord does not need formulas.  He does not need education.  He needs emptiness, and through emptiness, He brings enlightenment. 

Sometimes I wake up with my head already buzzing with what needs to be done for the day, but most of the time, the morning can be a good time to be quiet.  If morning does not work then perhaps it is the late evening when all the day's work is done, and I can sleep on what I hear.  It is always, though, morning by morning, day by day. 

And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.  When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?”  For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.  This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’”  And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less.  But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. ... Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted  (Exodus 16:14-21).

What sustained me yesterday may not be what I need for tomorrow.  Jesus told us to ask today for the bread we need this day.  We can trust that there will be a fresh inflow of exactly what we need for our challenges.  We may not know where it comes from or exactly what is it.  Its name is a question, yet we know it when we see it.  The Bible is a good place to start and even in the years when I don't plan to read through the Bible, I try to start the day with a verse or two or a chapter or two.  We may find je ne sais quoi in a painting, in a photograph, in music, in literature, or up a tree stand.  Up and down my sidebar and the sidebars of those in the sidebars, a person may find manna on any given day.  It is always somewhere.  If one will look.

Where there is inflow there must be outflow.  Acceptance implies surrender.  To do otherwise is to stagnate, to become a backwater of decay and corruption.   And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.”  But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. ... (Exodus 16:19-20).  Freely we have received, so freely we give.  As freely as we give, we will freely receive.  No matter what happens in the material world, no matter how chaotic or dire the circumstances, the same spiritual principles will always apply and succeed. 

But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. (1 John 2:20)