Nephi reminded his brothers of God’s miracles as he encouraged them to help build a ship. Among those miracles was this one: “Ye also know that they were fed with manna in the wilderness” (1 Nephi 17:28). Hundreds of years later, King Limhi reminded his people of the same miracle as he urged them to exercise faith that God would free them from captivity (Mosiah 7:19).
Soon after the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea and sang a song of praise and gratitude, they encountered a major challenge: hunger. In Egypt, they had worked hard and been at the mercy of their overseers, but food had been provided. Now, they had to fend for themselves, and there were a lot of mouths to feed in an unforgiving wilderness (Exodus 16:3)! The Lord’s solution was to provide what He called “bread from heaven” (Exodus 16:4).
That was His name. They called it something else: manna, which translates roughly to “What is it?” (Exodus 16:15, 31). That name, and the fact that they didn’t follow God’s instructions for its use, indicated that they had a lot to learn.
God’s instructions indicate that He intended for this bread to serve a didactic function:
- Gather only what you need for the day. Don’t hoard it; it will go bad overnight.
- On the sixth day of every week, gather twice as much. There will be no bread on the sabbath, and the bread from the prior day will stay fresh.
Pretty straightforward. But not simple enough to keep the people from pushing the boundaries. Some people tried to gather extra and store it. As expected, “it bred worms, and stank” (Exodus 16:20). Some people tried to gather bread on the sabbath, but “they found none” (Exodus 16:27). In both cases, Moses was frustrated by this lack of trust.
The Israelites lived this way for forty years, giving them a generation to learn two important principles:
- God’s blessings come incrementally. Don’t expect them all at once.
- He expects us to observe the sabbath day, to make it different from a regular workday.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson commented on the lessons from this process:
By providing a daily sustenance, one day at a time, Jehovah was trying to teach faith to a nation that over a period of some 400 years had lost much of the faith of their fathers. … In essence, the children of Israel had to walk with Him today and trust that He would grant a sufficient amount of food for the next day on the next day, and so on. In that way He could never be too far from their minds and hearts.
“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread,” Brigham Young University Devotional Address, 9 January 2011
After Jesus fed a multitude with only five loaves of bread and two small fishes, a group of people sought Him out, asking for another sign. They specifically referenced the food God provided in the wilderness: “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert.” Jesus responded, “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven” (John 6:31-32). Then, He made the point more dramatically:
I am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
John 6:48-50
The first time Jesus administered the sacrament on the American continent, He instructed His disciples to obtain bread and wine for the ordinance (3 Nephi 18:1). But the second time, He provided it miraculously. “Now, there had been no bread, neither wine, brought by the disciples, neither by the multitude; but he truly gave unto them bread to eat, and also wine to drink” (3 Nephi 20:6-7). Bread from heaven! On this occasion, He declared, “He that eateth this bread eateth of my body to his soul; and he that drinketh of this wine drinketh of my blood to his soul; and his soul shall never hunger nor thirst, but shall be filled” (3 Nephi 20:8). Manna provided temporary nourishment to hungry bodies, but He provides permanent nourishment to hungry souls!
The sacrament serves as a weekly reminder “that we have Him of whom manna was a type and symbol, the very Bread of Life, the Redeemer” (Christofferson).
Today, I will trust God to give me bread from heaven. I will recognize that His blessings come incrementally and according to His patterns. I will remember that manna was only symbolic of the true Bread of Life, our Savior, who grants us eternal life.
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