Why I Hate Manna

It’s hard to live one day at a time.

Lately I’ve been feeling that and seeing it in the lives of people I care about. The steady drain of financial suspense. The cold prospect of disease creeping into the life of a friend. The heart-wrenching pain of sudden bad news in lives of friends. And while today seems to have worked out—barely—who knows what will happen tomorrow? That’s what living on manna must have been like (Exodus 16).

It’s not that manna’s so bad, actually. It’s actually amazing if you really think about it. Fed directly by God--how cool is that? Every day there’s a brand new helping of what you need, carefully dished out in the perfect portions designed for you.

It’s not the manna really. Manna is fine, even if it lacks the variety. And it’s not even the “coming from heaven” part of it. Even after all these years of Bedouin backpacking the daily reminder of His presence is still reassuring.

The problem with manna is that it’s all you get. It’s not like you can scare up some nice roasted quail, and you can hardly remember the exotic fruits and vegetables from Egypt. And so when you’re forced to have the same thing day after day after day…well, you begin to discover that you really hunger for more than bread alone.

Just think how nice it would be to have a choice, after all. Choosing another round of manna would be so much more empowering than simply being given it. “What do you feel like for dinner tonight, dear?—Oh…how about some manna this evening?” It’s nice to have some variety on the menu.

But the real problem with manna is that there’s no back-up supplier. It only comes from Him. And while He’s never failed to deliver, He’s also made a point of never giving one extra flake to store away. No matter how careful you might be, it’s absolutely utterly impossible to get any kind of margin for tomorrow. That's got to raise at least a few questions for you. There’s simply no way to get any kind of real security. And so you live from one morning’s manna-gathering to the next, with the nagging realization that if this crazy bread from heaven even thinned out you’d face certain disaster. It’s humbling to feel so dependent. Sometimes manna tastes like eating crow.

And so you hunger, even when your stomach’s stuffed. You hunger in advance for tomorrow because you never know how tomorrow will turn out. You hunger for some of the fruit from the Tree in Eden, back when God first started all these crazy limits on our diet. Sometimes it almost seems like too much.

And yet, by His great mercy, we are not consumed. His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. (Lam. 3:23)

Sometimes, sitting back after a big meal of--you guessed it—manna, you begin to get a strange sense that maybe it’s supposed to be like this. Your days uncluttered by the hubris that comes from margin, your plans completely aligned with the giver of manna, the Giver of All Good Things. You realize you have exactly what He wants you to have, no more and no less. Relying not simply on the daily spread of that crazy desert bread, but relying even more on the character of the One who gives that manna. He is good, you’ve discovered.

No one would ever choose to live on manna. Maybe that’s why God doesn’t give us the choice. He gives what we hunger for even while depriving us of what we want.

How to be miserable.

I've been thinking about happiness this week, preparing for this Sunday's "How to be Miserable". (Now there's a sermon title that'll really pack 'em in!)

Our country has always been based on "the pursuit of happiness". That little phrase would have been remarkable in the 18th century. Not many monarchs at the time were staying awake wondering whether their people were happy. As long as they had bread--or cake, in the case of the French--why bother?

There are some interesting assumptions in the phrase "the pursuit of happiness". First of all, what makes us think that happiness should actually be a right that we should expect to pursue? Should happiness be considered essential, or is it merely a kind of icing on our cake? But even more striking is the assumption that happiness is something that we can identify, set our aim toward, and pursue. It assumes that you and I have a pretty good idea what will make us happy, and if only given the chance to pursue them we can be happy.

But what if happiness wasn't something we could engineer ourselves? What if being happy was actually more like sneezing? If you've ever been stuck mid-sentence, your face contorted by a sneeze that wasn't quite ready to launch, you know how hard it can be to force something like that. Sometimes we're the most miserable when we're busy trying to be happy.

People often turn to the Bible to find happiness. The problem is that the Bible seems to take its time getting around to issues of happiness. Along the way there's an awful lot of taking up one's cross, dying to self and even having to rise again with the crucified savior. The Bible's picture of fulfillment often seems to be anti-happiness: turning the other cheek, giving up one's cloak, forgiving the very people who made us unhappy in the first place.

Here's the secret. While the Bible seems pretty nonchalant about happiness, it is much more serious about something else: joy. Joy is what can come when you've been so thoroughly filled by Something so completely satisfying that one's level of happiness becomes less and less important. Joy is what Paul bubbled with when he wrote to the Philippians about how it didn't really matter whether he lived or died, he just wanted to serve Christ. (He almost sounded a little Buddhist at that point, except you can tell that he cared more deeply than any respectable Buddhist would allow.)

Our nation has unprecedented freedom to pursue our own personal happiness. I don't think it's helped very much. From what I can tell, people who "have it all" don't seem to be enjoying life any more than people who have much less. They just experience their frustration while living in bigger houses.

Most of my personal fantasies still tend to aim towards "having it all", but God's helping me get over that. He's steadily weaning me from happiness and whetting my appetite for joy. On the days when I cooperate with him, I find the strangest thing happen: pleasure.

I enjoy that.

I'm Good!

“I’m good.”

We say that sometimes, usually when someone asks if we need help. Sounds a little presumptuous, but it seems to work with current slang expressions. I may stumble noticeably, my friends turn and ask if I need any help, to which I respond: “No, I’m good.”

It’s ironic, of course, because usually if someone has reason to ask us this it means we’re actually not doing very well. We rarely announce our “goodness” when we successfully step over a curb in a parking lot and enter a store without incident. It’s not until we trip over that curb that it even occurs to us to announce our self-sufficiency to our fellow shoppers. It’s only when we’re obviously having trouble that we feel the need to proclaim our goodness.

Actually, the expression “I’m good” probably means something quite the opposite. It probably means something like “Even though I’m having trouble, I’d still rather handle things on my own.” Or more succinctly: “(I’d like to think that) I’m good!”

I think there are a lot of people in the bible who would understand this. I think of Nicodemus in John 3, discreetly searching out Christ under the cover of night. Something’s not quite right, so he seeks Jesus’ word on becoming acceptable in God’s eyes. Jesus flatly informs him that he must be born again. Nicodemus briefly ponders the cost of surrendering a lifetime of religious celebrity; the price is too much to ask. “I’m good,” he tells the Messiah, as he scurries back into his night.

Or the more candid approach of the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18. “What must I do to be good”, he asks Jesus. Give away all your riches, Christ tells him. He, too, slinks away: “That’s OK--I’m good.”

It’d be nice to think that God will simply accept us as we are: not perfect, but certainly not bad. But we have to do a few theological acrobatics to get this to happen. Claiming goodness involves somehow lowering the bar of God’s standards until we can easily clear it. We re-phrase “be perfect as your Father in Heaven in perfect” until it sounds like “be a little better than other people you know.”

Contrast this with the Philippian jailor, as found in Acts 16. He’s in trouble. An earthquake has broken open his stronghold and now the prisoners entrusted to him are now free to escape. This is not good. In his mind he already hears his death sentence pronounced: his life for theirs. In his panic he turns to Paul and Silas: “what must I do to be saved?”

Now, I must tell you: I find this question a bit curious. Where I grew up the word “saved” was usually reserved for conversations involving a specific understanding of Jesus’ role in covering the guilt of our sins. In the middle of what’s probably the worst crisis of his life this jailor is calling a quick time-out to discuss Paul and Silas’ theory of the atonement? I don’t think so?

It’s probably fair to say that whatever the jailer meant by the word “saved” must have extended much further than clarifying his doctrine of justification by faith. This was a big question he was voicing.

However, I think I know what he’s wasn’t saying at that moment: “I’m good”.

There’s something that happens when someone suddenly discovers their complete inability to make their life “good”. That may come in a jailer’s crisis, an adolescent discovery or maybe in mid-life changes, but however it happens it involves a surrender of everything to the One who can actually make things happen well.

Announcing “I’m good” is probably forgivable when I stumble a little. After all, it’s just a figure of speech. But a day is coming when those words will take on a lot more meaning. On that Day every single stumble I’ve ever made—including the big ones—will be inventoried for public display if needed. I wonder if I’ll cringe as I realize how long that list really is. But as everyone’s attention turns to that list, someone will hold up nail-scarred hands reassuringly.

“It’s OK”, he’ll declare. “He’s good.”