providence

I used to backpack. The thing about backpacking is keeping the weight of your pack down; you don’t take anything you don’t need. So the process of meal planning becomes critical, a balance between adding pounds on your back and feeling full when you eat. Meals are defined not by quantity, but by nutritional adequacy. It’s all about getting just enough of the right stuff.

I thought of those days when I read Joshua 5:12 “The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate the produce of Canaan.” This took place when the Israelites had crossed the river into Canaan and were camped on the plains in front of Jericho. They had arrived; there was no longer any need for trail food. 

This seems to me a telling snapshot of God’s providence. For many long decades he sustained his people in their desert wanderings with miracle food. Once in Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, he stopped giving manna. He didn’t stop providing - he gave them this rich land, after all - but he did it in a new way appropriate to their new circumstance.

I see two comforting things in this. First, if God ever sends me to a hard place or through a hard time, his providence will be enough for that too. Even if it takes a miracle, he’ll give me what I need to obey him.

Second, his providence is tailor-made for me. It changes with my needs and times. He won’t make me eat manna when I’m surrounded by milk and honey. He won’t keep giving me miracle food when what I most need in my new place is something else.

God provides. He really does provide, exactly the thing that’s needed exactly at the point it’s needed. Not too early, or I might not turn to him. Or more likely, I’ll start to think I’m entitled. And not too late. The perfect balance of enough, always.