Manna

And then...life. And then, you wonder if you still love God or if He still loves you or if you even know anything about Him at all. 

As we saw yesterday, God hasn't gone anywhere, but He's different in every season. Different aspects of His heart and character manifest themselves in different ways according to where we are and what our needs are and what our eyes are open to. 

The simplest way to say this is: you only need manna in the wilderness. 

When Israel left Egypt and set to wandering, they got hungry along the way. God gave them manna from heaven, this new sort of thing they had never seen before that appeared on the ground for them every morning. And they haven't seen it since. 

In Egypt, God showed His love by drawing a distinct line between His people in Goshen, who were never touched by frogs or gnats or blood or death, and the people of Egypt, who are probably still cleaning frogs out of their houses. 

There has never been a ram in a thicket anywhere in Scripture except on Mount Moriah when Abraham needed a sacrifice. 

In the Tabernacle, the Levites were responsible for carrying all of the things of the tent, but when the Temple came along, they moved into the cities of refuge and became the ministers of God's justice and protection. 

The list could go on and on. As we read through the Bible, we continue to see all of these different examples of God's love and goodness depending on where His people are, what kind of season they are in. 

Should we say, then, that God is ever-changing? Of course not. We understand that all of these things are just aspects of His one being, of the one consistent reality that is the very heart of God. We understand that you only need manna in the wilderness, you only need carriers in the desert, you only need a sacrifice on the mountain. We understand that God met His people in exactly the way they needed at exactly the time they needed Him in exactly the place where they were.

The same is true today. 

It's hard when our life changes because it feels like our God changes. It feels like everything we thought we knew about Him is called into question as the experience we've had of God starts to fade in a new place. But...it has to. Some other aspect of His love is coming. We are about to encounter Him in a new way. We are about to deepen our relationship, if we can just hold on and keep looking for the new way that God loves us here.