Park United Methodist Church

Exodus 16:2-15

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Reflection -  Just Enough

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Sometimes it is really hard when we go places, and there is nothing safe to eat.  I have gotten to a point where I can manage, but it is almost physically painful when it happens to Abi.  I hate to see one of my kids hungry.  No, don’t get me wrong.  We have never truly been without for any meaningful period of time.  We have managed to find something somewhere sooner or later.  It is that moment, though, that I have just seen a glimpse of the frustration of the hungry.

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When was the last time you were truly hungry?

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Did you know that children facing hunger are twice as likely to repeat a grade as their non-hungry peers?  Hunger increases chronic diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes.  According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, moms of school-aged kids who face severe hunger are 56.2% more likely to have PTSD and 53.1% more likely to have severe depression than those who do not worry about food.

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During World War II, 36 conscientious objectors participated in a human study on starvation (The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, done by Ancel Keys, 1944) so they could study its effects and then the best way to help people to begin to eat and gain weight in the best way possible.  This study is still used today, and has made recovery from starvation physiologically possible.  

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The thing is, the men were interviewed in 2002-2003 for follow-up interviews.  Even so many years later, they had vivid memories of what they went through.  They remembered being quick to anger.  They noticed that if one of the guys was given an extra piece of bread, resentment spread throughout the ranks. They couldn’t think properly and were weak. All they could think about was food. If they watched a movie, they had no idea what was going on but could tell you everything that was eaten.    The study took six months.  They lost at least 25% of their body weight.  

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So many times we read these words in Exodus, and we think, those complainers. Those mumblers.  They were given freedom, and all they can do is complain!  From our place of comfort, where it is easier to point back and say,  “They were just a bunch of complainers,” we feel free to pass judgment.  Isn’t that the way, though?  Until we are in the middle of it, we forget.

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God hears the people crying out from the oppression and suffering in Egypt and steps in with Moses to bring them out of Egypt.  The thing is, it isn’t easy.  The journey, the trip, any of it.  They spend forty years in the desert figuring out how to be God’s people because this is so hard.  

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They are so very hungry.  The anger is there, and it is real.  The inability to think about anything but food.  The very real wish that God would have just killed them in Egypt because at least they would have died with full bellies.   Yet, they wouldn’t have.  Slaves would not have their fill of meat (v.3).   They are so hungry, though, that they are misremembering.  Starvation was setting in so hard that anything felt better than where they actually stood.

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So what happens?  God hears them and reacts.  God heard them when they spent three days wandering without water and provided water.  They have been wandering for 30 days now and have no food left.  God hears them.  God reacts.  God tells Moses that he will test them (v.4) to see if they can follow God’s instructions.  So, God sends flakes that cover the ground in the morning that they call manna and quail in the evening so they can have bread and protein.   God promises them they will have just enough. Just enough for a day at a time.  If they collected more, it would spoil — unless it was for the sabbath. That was the only day they were allowed to save food ahead.

 

That is the thing, though.  When we are used to not having enough, human beings tend to hoard, to store up, and sometimes even become greedy, collecting more than they need.  The people of God were not meant to have storehouses of unused things, but just enough. 

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We are currently trying to weed through a garage full of things we have collected from moving over and over again — buying something new for each place, afraid we'd have to do it all over, so we held onto everything, just in case we could use it in the next place, but also woven into it is the love and memories of the places we live in before. And here's what I've had to admit to myself: it isn't really about the stuff. It's love, and it's fear, and most days I can't tell which one is driving. That wasn't the instruction, was it? Just enough. Not "just enough, plus a little in case." 

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The instructions to Moses were to collect enough for the day for those in your household; do not save any for the next day or it would spoil, and it did.  The sixth day they were to collect double, because on that day alone it would last so that they still could have a sabbath - a day without work.

  

They had to practice trusting God to give them just enough.  Not too much, not too little.  This was not an easy life.  It was not relaxed, but it also meant God was listening.  God was interactive, and God was looking out for them.  God’s people are never alone.  We have just enough.  

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Centuries later, the apostle Paul is trying to convince one church to help another church that's struggling, and he reaches all the way back to verse 18 — the one who gathered much had nothing left over, the one who gathered little had no shortage. He's telling them: this isn't a new idea. This is how God's people have always been asked to live. What we have isn't just for us to keep safe. It's for us to share, the way manna was never meant to be stored. 

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So the question falls: where do I have just enough and we don’t realize it?  What is our excess - and who is it for?