A Season to Savor God’s Sweetness

My “post-Halloween” candy binge actually began on October 30th, which might explain why there was half as much candy to give away on the 31st…and why I’m chomping on a Kit Kat as I type this. Halloween is the gateway to the holiday revelry of cozy indulgence. We open the windows to let the crisp Fall air in, throw on our sweaters, make the first pot of chili or chicken noodle soup, exhale, and drink in the sweetness. From mini-chocolates to candy canes; cider to eggnog, this is a season of sugar and spice.

My “post-Halloween” candy binge actually began on October 30th, which might explain why there was half as much candy to give away on the 31st…and why I’m chomping on a Kit Kat as I type this. Halloween is the gateway to the holiday revelry of cozy indulgence. We open the windows to let the crisp Fall air in, throw on our sweaters, make the first pot of chili or chicken noodle soup, exhale, and drink in the sweetness. From mini-chocolates to candy canes; cider to eggnog, this is a season of sugar and spice.

I wonder how tongues of the people of Israel responded to their first nibble of manna; which tasted of wafers and honey according to Exodus 16:31. Wafers and honey on the formerly enslaved palate must have tasted of emancipation, decadence, and rest. The first food they did not need permission to eat, nor did they toil for. The first food provided directly from God instead of their oppressors.

You can’t blame the people of Israel for responding to this sweetness with hoarding. Though they were commanded to take only what they needed, and to store none – except on the day before Sabbath – some of the Israelites couldn’t help but put some manna away for a rainy day. Unfortunately, manna has a very short shelf life. They were left with worms and rot instead of manna.

Have you ever worked feverishly at home or on the job, just marking off each day until vacation, but still couldn’t manage to tear yourself away from your phone, your netbook, your iPad when you finally got to a place of rest? Still slaving instead of stopping to savor the sweet reprieve?

Then you can imagine that after over 400 years of literal bondage, alienation from their God and culture, and living in constant fear and repression, that it would be hard to exhale, and quite easy to put away some manna – just in case. One morning of manna doesn’t erase 400 years of hopelessness.

Resting in the sweetness of God is an act of faith, an act of submission. Yet it’s immensely difficult to be fearful based on past pain. God had definitively routed out the enemy; the Egyptians lost their crops, their first born, and their soldiers were drowned in the sea before the eyes of the people of Israel. But the more difficult battle waged on in their hearts and minds. I believe they struggled with connecting and trusting God after watching their forefathers live and die without deliverance. This bitterness could be the root explanation for why they had to forge a god they could see, and why they murmured so much about living in the wilderness. What if God abandoned them there? What if He left them as He did for all those years in Egypt?

We have the same fears. What do I do in the wake of this divorce? Singleness? Job loss? Childlessness? Will God be with me? What if He doesn’t come through?

Can we trust God and rest in the sweetness of His goodness? Some circumstances would shout “NO!”

But our blood-bought salvation-seal, the Holy Spirit, cries out, “YES!”

We don’t need a Moses. We have Jesus. We don’t need manna. We have the Bread of Life. Sometimes our Lord parts the waters of our chaos to deliver us in grand fashion. However, the miraculous presence and provision of God takes place in the every day wilderness of our lives, before we reach our destination.

Sometimes the Lord’s sweet provision is not to eliminate the cause of pain, but to give us a space to examine it. A place to pause, exhale, cry. To give us a time to heal before we reach the next place He’s trying to take us. He doesn’t run roughshod over our wounds, and is not content to whitewash them, even when we are. His carved out space for healing is what makes an ordinary day, holy. Savor God's sweetness.