God had parted the waters of the Jordan to make a pathway for his people into their inheritance and they had responded by dedicating themselves to God using the two symbols that God had given them to do this: circumcision and the Passover. And then the manna stopped coming. Imagine this situation. They had been sustained on a miraculous provision of manna for all their lives and now it just stopped. From now on they would have to fight and work for their food. There would be no more manna from heaven. I imagine that many would have wanted to go back to seeing manna fall from heaven, even just for that confirmation that God was with them. But God was moving his people on to maturity and into a land of milk and honey. As we move forward in our journey with God, both individually and corporately, it often seems like things get harder. Things don’t come as easily as they did in the past and sometimes it seems far less sensational than the past. There is always the temptation to idealise the past as though that was the high point and now it has all been downhill. God’s plan always moves forwards and upwards, and with every step in maturity he withdraws the crutches and ceases to spoon feed us. In all this he is calling us to exercise a more mature faith. Celebrate the past, but don’t get so nostalgic about it that you become unable to embrace the new challenges and recognise the new opportunities.
Ask God to show you how he wants to stretch your faith and move you forward.
Read Joshua 5:1-12
