5. Our Daily Manna

If you are reading this blog for the first time during Lent, you should be aware that you have entered a story that overlays the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the Promise Land with the Journey of Aspiring Immortals to the Kingdom of God that is on the new immortal Earth. The parallels are striking. The Exodus can teach us Christians some very important lessons about attitude and relationship. For more about this comparison go to Exodus II explained. The series began with Two Wait for Lent.

“Asa, wake up! Wake up from the dead. The sun is shining, it’s time to live.”

With squinting eyes to sip the light, Asa reluctantly left his dream-world where he had been enjoying a happy reunion with his aunts Marietta, Despina and Phillippa who one by one had left him for the afterlife when he was a young impoverished boy. During the joyous reunion, hugs and coos, long missed familiar smiles, sparkling eyes of jolly rotund women, the aunties assured Asa that God was alive and that they too breathed angelic air. To leave such festivities for the wilderness of Shur where they hadn’t even sipped water in days a man must be deranged. Try as he did, Asa could not return to the happy reunion. Aunties were engulfed by the quicksand of wakefulness without even a good by or so long, and with so many more questions left unanswered.

“Good morning Ben, what do you want from me now.”

“I am hungry Asa. I have been asking around; the crumbs are going to the women and children. Have you a morsel to share with a brother who loves you?”

“Ben, do you remember what the man of God told us to ask of the Lord? Don’t bruise your mind, I’ll tell you. Pray by saying, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ Why starve when all we need to do is pray. Let us congregate and ask. Will God say no? ”

So like sheepdogs Ben and Asa herded their fellow pilgrims into a bald patch of land forming a large plate of hungry humanity upon the earth’s table, a nest of wide mouth infant birdies. From a makeshift perch Asa bellowed to be heard by God as well as by the pilgrims before him, “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, hallowed is Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” As a response to a tap by an invisible conductor the whole orchestra of Israel in unison turned their heads to the right looking toward the wilderness there, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in a luminous cloud. At once all heads bowed and thousands of eyelids shut out the blinding light while hearts trembled with fear and awe. The Lord spoke to each man, woman, and child in their own hearts,

“Your spirits live in tyrannical bodies. I will give you each day your daily bread but know this, if Adam and Eve could not remain in Paradise without controlling their appetites how will you enter the Promise Land without the fast I lay before you?”

“My children,” spoke the Lord God in every heart that could hear “do not allow your stomachs to call you back into your former bondage to sin. For you travel not by foot and muscle but by spirit and mind. I have delicacies for you unimaginable if only you will subdue your flesh.”

“I will give to you my beloved pilgrims your daily bread, this is my pleasure. Yet, you must know what your Egyptian neighbors did not know. Sin resulted from surrendering spirit to body. On this journey learn how to surrender your body that your spirit may grow stronger. You are to become a new nation worthy to reside in the Promise Land as immortals. With your cooperation My image and likeness can be restored to each of you so that you will never know sickness, disease or death again. But during this journey you are not to eat from blood or of blood.

1 For the life is in the blood, and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life which it represents. Only the blood of the Savior may you eat that you may have immortal life. This is the atonement you need. The blood of animals is mortal blood. This blood you may not eat. 2 There is a place on this road called Kilboth-hattaavah [the place of sensuous desire] because there they buried the people whose physical appetite caused them to sin.

On this journey to the Promise Land you will eat My Son’s immortal Blood for atonement and for strength. Do not mix precious Blood with the blood of mortal animals. Anything that has no blood you may eat, even shellfish with no blood you may eat. Kill the spinach, kill the wheat, kill the orange, pluck the bean from mother earth, murder the clam, but of chickens you may not eat. For their blood, even their egg’s blood will diminish the life of your spirit. If you can do this you will reach the Promise Land. On the road ahead dangers lurk, you need the strength that abstinence offers. “

And if those words had been lightening they could not have moved more surely and swiftly from God’s heart to theirs. So pierced was this holy congregation so that each man, woman, and child believed that he had just feasted from a richly laden table in the desert. Asa’s heart was so full that that his hollow stomach gladly collapsed to make room for that prince of organs.

3 And when the cloud had gone, behold on the face of the wilderness there lay a fine, round flake and flake-like thing, as fine as hoarfrost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they called it Manna which means what is it for they did not know what it was. And Asa said to them, This is the bread which the Lord gives us to eat. Let every man gather of it as much as he will need, an cup for each person, according to the number of your persons; take it, every man for those in his tent. The people did so and gathered some more and some less. He who gathered much had nothing left over and he who gathered little had no lack. And every day of the journey until they reached the Promise Land, Israel was given its daily bread and hungered nevermore.

•1. Lev 17.11

•2. Num 11:34

•3. Exodus 16:15-17

Soul Food:

In the very act of satisfying his natural appetite, a man forfeits his spiritual understanding. -Ezekial

Help me o Lord not to be like the first Adam who succumbed to temptation-broke the fast and died, but to be like the second Adam (Jesus Christ) who overcame temptation and destroyed death to return us to Paradise.

Let hunger til the garden of your soul.

God humbled you and allowed you to hunger and fed you manna, so you would personally recognize that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

A change of diet represents a change of life.

My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to do His work