Guest blogger - Bethani England

Remembering the Bread

Bethani England

At this age, well I’m not sure if a number of years has much to do with it, but at this point in my young adult life, it has become easy for me to feel… stale. Now, adding one letter to this word gives a whole new meaning to the feeling, the new word being: stable. I am becoming more and more stable in my new “adult” world.

I am 24. I have been married to my wonderful husband for a little over a year now. We both have great, satisfying jobs and are pursuing higher degrees in grad school. We have a nice place to live and are very independent from our parents, who are more than 8 hours from us. So I feel very confident and very established. What a word… established. Something that many young adults would crave to feel, yet I have mixed emotions. Because of my “establishment” or my stability, I feel stale… stagnant maybe even.

So it’s been since the summer of 2011 that I moved back to the U.S. I had been living with my family, who are missionaries, in Guatemala for nine years, before that we lived in Costa Rica for a year. Feeling established was not familiar to me. In fact the word stable was not one we often used. My life on the mission field was never stable, never established; never routine. But the fact of the matter is that it kept my faith strong. When I was not necessarily comfortable in my surroundings, it kept me on my toes in a spiritual way, I was needy; I was hungry.

Recently though, I’ve been full. And I truly am grateful for this, but in a way a little too comfortable, a little too fat and happy. The Lord has blessed me immensely in my emerging adulthood, but instead of turning right back around and offering all of my comforts back to him, I’ve wallowed in it. I’m like the rich fool who has stored up his riches, who built bigger barns to store his surplus grain and said to himself, “Now I can take life easy; eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12:13-21). This is exaggerating just a tad. I am very grateful for my marriage, job, education, home, church, etc. But even still, I’m feeling stale.

My husband and I have somewhat taken up the interest of baking bread. So sitting down about a week ago to try and read my Bible, I say “try” because I’m stale and it’s hard right now and I’m distracted and I don’t give enough time to the Lord, I decided to read about bread. I looked up in the back of my Bible, where it has the passages sorted by key words or topics: bread.

Deuteronomy 8 is where I began to read:

“Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing...

10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.”

I know this is a long passage, but in so many ways it spoke to me. I’m not going to say that it was revolutionary in my spiritual walk and that now all is good and I am fresh again. No, I’m still struggling with understanding where I am right now. But at the same time, I am remembering the bread. If you’ve never read it, or if you need to refresh your memory, go to Exodus 16 and read about the first arrival, and consistency, of the manna – or the “unknown bread”.

The Israelite community was out wandering the desert. It had been more than two months since they had left their not so cushy, but still not desert-wandering lives in Egypt. They were complaining about it and saying how they wished they could’ve stayed in their slavery and died in Egypt because at least they had food. The Lord told Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.” (Exodus 16:4)

So he created for them a strange wafer that fell in flakes onto the misty ground, appearing as frost. And the grumbling people picked it up. The conditions were this, gather just as much as they needed, a certain amount for each person in each tent, and not to keep any of it until morning. When the people disobeyed and tried to stock up, or get extra just in case it didn’t come back, doubting the Lord’s provision, the flakes were filled with maggots and smelled the following morning. The Israelites ate this strange food for 40 years. And, quoted from the Deuteronomy passage above, their “clothes did not wear out” and their “feet did not swell” for 40 years.

Moses told them to remember the strange bread that came down from Heaven. He admonishes them saying remember how you were needy and hungry, so that you had to rely on your God and his words? He also warns them, and this is the part that really resonated with me, “Be careful you do not forget the Lord” when you are in good and secure places. He says, “when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down”, basically, when you get comfortable and homey in this world, “then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord” who brought you through so much. Now I’m paraphrasing a bit to make my point. He even tells them in the end that they may say to themselves, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth [or success] for me.”

I look at my life, the life that has been through its deserts and has faced its waterless land, venomous snakes and scorpions (vs. 15), but now the water flows free. The bread is plentiful. I’m in a fine house and feel settled down, and it has become harder than I imagined to remember just what those sweet, wafer flakes tasted like. I’m forgetting how the Lord struck the rock and produced a stream of water. I’m forgetting the unknown bread, the ways that the Lord came so clearly, out of nowhere to me when I was thirsty, weak, and even complaining.

Isaiah 46:3-4 & 8-9 tells us to listen. The Lord tells the descendants of Jacob and the people of Israel through Isaiah the prophet that he carried them “since they were born.” He says, “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Then comes the command, “Remember this, keep it in mind, take it to heart… Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.”

So now, in my stability, I’m remembering the bread. Like I said, nothing has changed overnight, but I’m remembering how the Lord gave me exactly what I needed for the day, and how sweet it was to taste his presence. Now, although I feel full, I can look to the Lord and praise him in thanksgiving. It is not my power nor my strength that has produced this stability, but his constant presence: in the unknown bread, in the streams of water from the stone, in the deserts and in the land of goodness – He is my portion and daily confirms his covenant to me.