Joshua 5:10-12

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On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. 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 of the produce of Canaan.

The manna stopped after the Israelites started eating from the land of Canaan. What can this tell us? I wondered out loud why God did not continue on with the provision of manna? The purpose of God providing manna is obvious as stated in Deuteronomy 8:

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

It was God's way of sustaining His people in the desert. It was His way of teaching the people to rely not on their physical surrounding but on God's sustenance. A thought here, as I have asked, why then He stopped after Israel started eating from Canaan? Is it because the purpose of manna had already been fulfilled? Of course, another thought would be how did the people react, other than celebrating the Passover?

The whole lesson was of course in the topic of thanksgiving and remembrance of God. I was reminded just now, after exiting from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that I need to continue to remember God in my search for a career. I just wonder, how would we react though, when God stops His miracles among us and we begin to live everyday as per normal, just like what the Israelites experienced? But yet, we know that that was not the last Israel saw God at work, only in other ways. So when we stop seeing God's blessing in certain areas in our lives, do we see them happening in other areas of our lives?

My result was at a plummet for the past three semesters. It seemed that God had stopped blessing me in my studies. Did that mean that God had stopped working in my life? No, it's a definite No, cos He continues to speak into my life through His word and people, in different situations. Likewise, we must not be disillusioned by the fact that we dun see His blessings in where we expect to see. We need to start looking around. Look at where we least expect, perhaps.

God stopped providing manna for the Israelites, but He blessed them with the produce of Canaan.

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