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| The Day God Provided Manna |
Before Moses led us out of Egypt, I was a stonecutter.
My father had cut stone before me, and his father had labored beneath Pharaoh before him.
We were born into bondage and expected to die in it.
My father did.
But I lived to see the sea open.
I lived to gather bread from the wilderness.
And I lived to hold a son in my arms who had never been a slave.
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I was thirty-two when Moses led us out of Egypt.
My wife, Keziah, walked beside me carrying our youngest daughter whenever the child's legs grew tired. Our son, Jamin, was nine and determined to prove he could walk as far as any grown man.
Keziah was carrying our third child.
And as we left Egypt behind, I remember placing my hand against her back and thinking that this child would never belong to Pharaoh.
I had seen things in Egypt that my father would never have believed.
The Nile turned to blood.
Frogs filled the land.
Darkness covered Egypt while there was light among our people.
And on the night none of us would ever forget, we remained inside our homes with blood upon our doorposts while death passed through the land.
Then Pharaoh let us go.
For the first time in my life, I walked away from Egypt without a taskmaster ordering me back.
I thought freedom would feel like the end of fear.
I was wrong.
At the Red Sea, fear found us again.
Pharaoh's army was behind us. Water stretched before us. I remember Jamin gripping my hand while Keziah held our daughter against her chest.
There was nowhere to go.
Then the LORD made a way where no man could have made one.
I watched walls of water rise beside us.
I watched my family reach the other side.
I walked across the bottom of the sea on dry ground.
These feet did.
And when the waters returned upon Pharaoh's army, I believed I would never again doubt the God who had delivered us.
It is easy to make such promises when you have just watched a sea divide.
But the wilderness taught me otherwise.
Weeks passed.
The food we had carried from Egypt dwindled.
Every day I watched our supplies grow smaller.
A little less flour.
A little less grain.
Another empty container.
I began calculating portions before Keziah prepared them.
“How much is left?”
“Enough for today,” she would say.
I wanted to know about tomorrow.
All my life, I had provided with these hands.
Scarred hands.
Calloused hands.
Hands that had lifted hammers and shaped stone beneath an Egyptian sun.
I didn’t like the work Pharaoh demanded from us.
Strike the stone.
Shape the stone.
Carry the stone.
Work, and somehow your family eats.
But what could a stonecutter do in a wilderness?
There was no field for me to harvest.
No storehouse from which I could purchase grain.
No labor I could perform that would put bread into the hands of my children.
Around us, people began to murmur.
At first quietly.
Then openly.
They spoke of Egypt.
Of flesh pots.
Of bread.
Some said we should have remained there rather than be brought into the wilderness to die of hunger.
I understood their fear more than I wanted to admit.
Then I thought of my father.
Egypt had given him bread.
Egypt had also worked him until his body failed.
***
One evening Jamin looked at the small portion before him and then at me.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“What will we eat tomorrow?”
I looked at Keziah.
She lowered her eyes.
For the first time in my son's life, I couldn’t answer him.
“We will eat,” I finally said.
Later, after the children slept, I sat outside our tent staring at my hands.
Keziah came and lowered herself carefully beside me.
“The LORD brought us out of Egypt,” she said.
“I know.”
“He brought us through the sea.”
“I know.”
She rested one hand over her stomach.
“He has brought us this far.”
I looked across the wilderness.
“And tomorrow?”
“He will take us further.”
***
Word had spread through the camp that Moses said the LORD would rain bread from heaven in the morning.
After everything I had witnessed, I wanted to believe it without question.
But that night there was still an empty food sack inside our tent.
There was still a hungry boy sleeping nearby.
There was still a wife carrying my unborn child.
And there was nothing outside but wilderness.
Morning came.
I woke to voices.
At first I thought something was wrong.
Then Jamin rushed toward me.
“Father! Come!”
People were emerging from their tents throughout the camp.
I stepped outside.
Dew lay upon the ground.
As it lifted, something remained across the wilderness—small, round things scattered upon the earth.
People stared at it.
Some bent down and touched it.
Others called to their families.
“What is it?”
The question moved through the camp.
“What is it?”
I crouched and picked some up.
I had spent my life knowing the weight and texture of stone.
This was nothing like stone.
Then the word came from Moses.
“This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
Bread.
I stared at what rested in my palm.
Not grain from Egypt.
Not wages from Pharaoh.
Not something I had earned with a hammer.
Bread from the LORD.
We gathered according to what our household needed.
Keziah prepared it, and my children ate.
I watched Jamin take another bite.
Yesterday he had asked me what we would eat.
That morning God had answered him.
And the next morning, the manna was there again.
And the morning after that.
There were lessons we still had to learn.
Some tried to keep more than they were told, fearing tomorrow would bring nothing. What they kept bred worms and stank.
I understood them.
Trusting today's provision was one thing.
Trusting that God would provide again tomorrow was another.
Before the Sabbath, we gathered twice as much, just as Moses commanded.
That portion did not spoil.
Week by week, morning by morning, the LORD taught former slaves how to depend upon Him.
Months later, beneath the open wilderness sky, Keziah gave birth to our son.
We named him Zuriel.
My father had been born a slave.
So had I.
Zuriel would never wake to an Egyptian taskmaster.
He would never cut stone for Pharaoh.
He would grow knowing a wilderness I had once feared and a God who provided in it.
When he became old enough to eat what we gathered each morning, I sometimes watched him hold the manna in his small hand.
To him, it was ordinary.
He had never known a morning without it.
But I remembered the empty sacks. I remembered Jamin asking what we would eat. I remembered staring at my scarred hands and wondering how I would feed my family.
And now I held a son who had never belonged to Pharaoh.
And when he became old enough to ask where our bread came from, I did not point toward Egypt.
I did not point toward my hands.
I pointed toward heaven.
“The LORD gave us this bread.”
And every morning when I bent to gather it, I remembered:
The wilderness was empty.
But the hand of our God was not.
🕊️ An Echoes of Scripture Story
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