Dear Incarnation,
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day.'" Exodus 16:4
Sometime last week while I was preparing for Sunday's sermon, a footnote in one of my Exodus commentaries sent me down a rabbit trail researching manna and quail (as one does).
I had never really considered that manna might be a natural phenomena, much less a phenomena that could still exist today. But my commentary mentioned the work of archaeologists to find the mysterious food provision that the Israelites called "manna." I was intrigued. Maybe my old seminary login to JSTOR (an academic digital library) would still work? (It did.) Maybe I could pull a few articles from archaeology journals? (I could.) Here's what I learned.
The manna described in Exodus 16 is most likely the secretion of a type of plant lice that punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree, which grows in certain wadis of the Sinai Peninsula. This secretion falls as whitish flakes; in the cool of the morning it solidifies into clumps that can be collected, but in the heat of the day it disintegrates. If kept for very long, it spoils and is consumed by insects. This substance is sweet-tasting, light-textured, and rich in carbohydrates.
The geographic range of this particular plant lice and the seasonal timing of its secretions match the range and timing when the Israelites would have first encountered manna. And in fact, this substance (called man in Arabic) is still gathered by hunter-gatherers today. Katie even passed along this NYT article about its use in high-end cuisine and cocktails.
Likewise, the quail that appeared were also a natural phenomena. Migratory birds often have a sort of "layover" on the Sinai Peninsula or are blown there off the Mediterranean Sea. The birds are so exhausted and lethargic that they can be easily caught by hand, and this stop on their migratory route coincides with the timing of the Israelites' journeys.
Needless to say, I found this new information fascinating (the enneagram-knowledgeable in our congregation tell me this is classic 5 behavior!). But does this information diminish the miracle of God's provision? To me, it does the opposite; it actually heightens my sense of wonder and strengthens my trust in God's capacity to provide. Imagine the complex symbiosis of weather, migration, time, climate, and plant and animal life that came together in God's provision of food to his people just at the moment they needed it.
This is an ordinary miracle, one that opens our eyes to God's everyday provision of everything. Saint Augustine writes about such ordinary miracles in this way:
We take for granted the slow miracle whereby water in the irrigation of a vineyard becomes wine. It is only when Christ turns water into wine, in a quick motion, as it were, that we stand amazed.
And C.S. Lewis takes it a step further:
God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn the water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine. That, we fail to see…But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off. The miracle has only half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the wedding party in Cana.
The people's reaction to the manna and quail seem to reflect its ordinaryness; they are curious and a bit greedy, but they don't seem amazed in the way they do at the parting of the Red Sea or the pillar of smoke and fire. God is teaching them to rely on his day-by-day provision, rather than to look to extraordinary logic-defying acts. He is forming in them that "full effect" that Lewis describes. And I pray that God will form that effect in me, and in all of us, as we learn to see and enjoy his provision.
With love,
Amy
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