One day at a time: daily manna

Commenting upon God’s provision of daily manna Ed Welch writes:

“Control freaks and worriers are being told that the challenges of life are ordained by the Father and King. They are neither random nor accidental…The tests follow a particular pattern: God will give us what we need for today and today alone.

No mystery here, it is all spelled out…”Take as much as you want, but don’t keep a crumb for tomorrow”. In various forms, this will become God’s plan for human life. You will encounter it again when Jesus trains his disciples and sends them out on a missionary journey with no extra supplies (Mark 6:7-9). The plan of course, is genius. Dump a year’s supply of manna into cold storage and, guaranteed, you will forget God until the supply disappears. Such prosperity would be a curse. God’s strategy is to give us enough for today and then, when tomorrow comes, to give us enough for that day too.

Do you see how this is exactly what we need? Fears and worries live in the future, trying to assure a good outcome in a potentially hard situation. The last thing they want to do is trust anyone, God included. To thwart this tendency toward independence, God only gives us what we need when we need it. The emerging idea is that he wants us to trust him in the future rather than our self-protective plans.”

(Running Scared, p.77)