It Keeps Finding Me

A blog hop on finding manna, with the ladies of Exhale Creativity

I wasn’t going to write about manna, but it literally showed up on my doorstep.

“ Good afternoon. I was instructed to tell you, you have a porch delivery that needs to be refrigerated. The person wanted to say God sees you and loves you. Have a great day”

I got the text at 11:15 in the morning from an unknown number as I was finishing orientation for my new job. As I quickly drove across town in my minivan, I assumed I would either be walking up to a porch full of groceries or about to wind up on an upcoming episode of Dateline because some stranger somehow knows both my address and phone number. My husband got the Blink doorbell notification before I did and beat me home to see a Costco delivery on our front steps. There was mac and cheese, granola bars, Dave’s Killer Bread, oranges, eggs, Doritos and the biggest tube of ground beef I have ever seen. 

Manna.

I did my best investigative work, but despite my best efforts I have no idea who the mystery giver was.

***

Recently, I learned something interesting about manna, the flake like substance the Lord provided for His people as they wandered in the desert. The Biblical narrative we read about in the books of Exodus and Numbers, tells us God’s chosen people, the Israelites, were slaves in Egypt. He sends a man to deliver them from captivity and promises them a new land that will be their own. But they have to walk through the desert for a few decades before entering. While they were wandering through the desert for 40 years, the Lord provided food for them each day. The  Exodus text tells us this food was manna, a flake like substance, and appeared with the dew of the morning. It was to be collected and used as food and none of it was to be stored from day to day. If you saved and stored it up for later, it would spoil. God would provide as much as they needed, as they needed it.

And so it was for forty years. The Israelites would continue on their trek, sustained by this manna as they waited for God’s promise to be fulfilled. However, the text in the book of Numbers tells us that once collected, manna also had to also be prepared. The flakes had to be collected, ground up, and then cooked into cake like forms. Wonder Bread wasn’t just falling from the sky like I had somehow assumed was happening all those year. It’s also in this text we see the Israelites grumbling, aching for the melon and the meat they enjoyed in Egypt while they were slaves. When God heard the grumbling, His anger was aroused. And yet we know for forty years He continued to provide for His children.

Now, I get why they grumbled. It was actual work that had to be done in order to eat.

“C’mon Lord!” I imagine them saying. “We are wandering in this awful desert heat! We just left captivity. Is this what freedom is supposed to feel like? We hardly know where we are going. We are tired! Please just give us some sourdough from heaven!”

I can speculate so many reasons for the grumbling. Perhaps the manna tasted the same day after day. (But my three-year-old has been known to eat a peanut butter sandwich everyday for three weeks straight so I don’t think it was just bland flavor that they griped about.) Perhaps they expected provision to look like the melon and onions and leeks and meat they had enjoyed in Egypt. Perhaps they thought they were justified having just come out of slavery. Perhaps they thought they were entitled to the best tasting food. Perhaps they thought they deserved a break, walking in desert heat was enough toil for the day. Perhaps they thought God’s provision should be a bit more enjoyable.

These were some of the things I was meditating on as I wrote this essay, which was shared about in the summer collection at Coffee + Crumbs. I’ve spent seasons begging God for provision, coming up with my own version of what I deserve it. (Plot twist: we don’t deserve any of it.) And yet, as I was pondering this ancient narrative I began seeing His provision all around me. A $5 copay at the therapist instead of the usual $70. Free school lunches when the grocery bill is tight. A donated gift card for gas. Manna was all around me.

***

I’m not an Israelite wandering the desert in search of the promised land dependent on God for food. But I am His child, dependent on His breath to sustain mine. I am a 30-something-year-old woman who often feels like the Lord should bring a little bit for ease to life than I regularly experience. Like the Israelites, I too grumble at the Lord expecting His provision to look a specific way, so clouded by my own desires, I miss the manna right in front of me. It shows up in the most unexpected of places. And when you start seeing manna in your own life, you can’t stop seeing it all around.

I’ve seen manna fall in the tears of my friend who sat by my son’s bedside in the hospital.

Manna has been a text from a friend “ I know you miss your dad. Here’s $5. Go get yourself a treat to remember him.”

Manna has found me at the food pantry, in the carpool line, and at Starbucks. Once, during COVID, manna was an invitation from a friend to their private playground in a gated community that wasn’t shut down by executive orders so my three boys could run around freely.

Manna was a Venmo for exactly $113, the cost of a medical bill we couldn’t afford to pay.

Just this week, manna was getting a surprise paycheck two days early, exactly 48 hours before our car battery died and needed to be replaced immediately.

Manna has been diapers and meal trains and offers of free babysitting.

This year manna has been a job offer and affordable daycare—provision when I wasn’t even looking.

Many times manna has shown up, I have grumbled. To be well acquainted with my own need, my own lack, my own struggle, is a shame I didn’t recognize I carried so heavily.

I’ve asked God to heal my dad’s cancer and when He didn’t, His presence in my grief became the manna I needed to keep going.

I’ve asked God to heal a marriage, and when He didn’t, our community became the manna for a single mom and her children.

I’ve asked God why my neurodivergent son has to struggle so much to find his place in this world, and his teachers, occupational therapists, and doctors have become our manna.

***

At the end of the Exodus narrative, it tells us God tells the people to collect and store some manna so that it can be kept for generations to come as a token of remembering the God who always provided for them. So I take note of the friends who have brought meals, the teachers who have provided safety, the mystery people who have delivered groceries. I store them up. I tell their stories. And in doing so, I remember the God who has always, always, provided as much as I have needed, as I have needed it.

I don’t know why God shows up as He does, but manna keeps finding me despite my grumblings. God keeps showing me His kindness despite how little I deserve it. Manna keeps showing up with the dew of the morning, in a text message, and on my front porch.

And each time it does my heart overflows in gratitude for such undeserved grace. 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Manna."