Have you ever prayed for something and felt God just drop it in your lap?
Has it ever happened to you that you prayed for something you really wanted or needed, and it ended up literally just falling from heaven?
That’s never happened to me, but I’d love to experience it one day!
The Israelites had that kind of experience, though, when they were hungry in the desert and prayed to God for food, manna rained down from heaven (Exodus 16:2-5).
‘Manna’ means ‘what is this?’ Because that’s what the Israelites asked themselves when they received it. They had never seen anything like it before. It was bread that looked like dhania seeds but tasted like honey cake.🧐 For 40 years, while they wander, they survive on manna, a miracle from heaven.
The story of the miraculous manna from heaven is passed down for generations, and the people remember it when, many centuries later, another great miracle of food provision happens: Jesus multiplies bread and fish and feeds a crowd of 5000 (John 6).
People ask each other, “Who is this?”
Jesus explains to them:
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. – John 6:48-51 NIV
The manna in the desert is a foreshadowing of Jesus.
Just as the bread God provided in the wilderness gave physical life to God’s people, Jesus, the bread of life, gives us eternal life.
Just as the manna provided all the energy and nutrients the people needed to survive in the wilderness, so we can find all that we need to sustain ourselves in Jesus.
