Feeding Your Hungry Soul: Daily Manna
Bible Stories Today: Episode 4
I have felt an inner hunger at many points in my life, especially when my children were young and I was trying to cope with having two kids on the autism spectrum. When we have challenges in our lives, we often feel this way--a hungry soul.I found that by feeding my soul in little ways, like the children of Israel gathered tiny grains of manna, that I felt strengthened to continue pushing forward in life.Enjoy this week's Bible Stories Today, episode 4--Feeding Your Hungry Soul: Daily Manna for some added insights into how we can apply this Bible story in our lives today.
Transcript
Tamara Anderson 0:00
Have you ever felt hungry inside, like a deep hunger not not hungry as in physically but hungry as in, like your soul is hungry? Often I found that I have felt that way when the trials and situations in life seem to weigh me down, and just seem to suck everything out of me, like, more is required of me than I can even possibly give. And it's that kind of deep hunger that I want to talk about today a little bit.
Tamara Anderson 0:38
I'm going to go back to a time in my life when I had four children age seven and under, and only one of them could communicate with me verbally. And that was my oldest he was seven. And then I had two sons with autism after him, and then a little baby girl at the very end, kind of as an oopsie at the end, because we really had our hands full with three boys. But the two in the middle, the two boys with autism were such a handful growing up, a lot of characteristics of autism is first they don't communicate verbally very well. And of course, this depends on where they are on the spectrum. But they don't sleep very well, they have a hard time going to the bathroom number two, and there's just a lot that goes into taking care of a child with autism.
Tamara Anderson 1:36
And I remember being this young mother, and giving my all to my kids and trying to help them survive day in and day out. Not only taking care of their physical needs, but trying to make sure that they a didn't die because I had one that was an escape artist and did everything possible to escape from our home constantly. And it was just exhausting. He was just one of the kids that I had to deal with. And anyway, so at this point in my life, I was not only exhausted physically, but emotionally I was worn out. I just didn't have I guess enough inner supply to keep myself going.
Tamara Anderson 2:21
And the story I want to compare that to today is the story of the children of Israel going into the wilderness and needing nourishment. And they received manna from the Lord fact here in Exodus chapter 16. The Lord promises them, he says, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And then he invited them to go out and pick it up. And the children of Israel were like, okay, he's gonna rain bread from heaven for us. And, and then you read a little bit farther in the chapter, and it says, And when they do that lay was gone up. Behold, upon the face of the wilderness, there lay a small, round thing. As small as the hoarfrost on the ground, we learned later in the scriptures that it was about the size of a coriander seed is what they call it.
Tamara Anderson 3:20
And I was reading this story earlier this year, and I thought, how big is a coriander seed, I'm a little bit of a gardener. And so I found out Coriander is cilantro. That is how big a coriander seed is. two millimeters, teeny, tiny, almost like a piece of grain. And here I got a whole bunch of them. Can you see that? Teeny, tiny, little seeds.
Tamara Anderson 3:48
This is how big manna was. I don't know why in my brain mana was always bigger. It was like, I figured maybe when they were collecting mana, I've seen pictures that artists have done of it. And I see people collecting these big wafer type things. And I thought, oh, that's what man was like, but no, you read about it, and you find out teeny tiny little seed size, size, just tiny. And they had to collect this from the floor.
Tamara Anderson 4:16
It says that that a man should collect about an Omer and I'm like, Well, how much is that? And Omar is 9.3 cups. Can you imagine collecting 9.3 cups of stuff like this? Do you know how long that would take? I don't know that would take a really, really long time.
Tamara Anderson 4:38
So how do we collect mana in our lives today? How do we satisfy that inner hunger that goes deep down into our soul? And that's what I want to talk a little bit about today. First of all, the first concept we learned from the children of Israel is God made them work to get their food he didn't just give them big old wafers, he wanted them to take small little things.
Tamara Anderson 5:05
And they did the same thing for 40 years, take those small little things and collect them to feed themselves. And I think a modern day parallel is, we too need to work to get our inner nourishment, it isn't something that's just gonna fall to us and big wafers, it doesn't happen that way. We've got to work and do those tiny little things every day, to nourish our inner hunger.
Tamara Anderson 5:29
And those small things can be praying every day, or reading our scriptures every day, or looking for things to be thankful for everyday looking for that hand of God in our lives. And as we pick and do these tiny little things, every day we we nourish ourselves inside we we draw close to Him, maybe we meditate, maybe we sit and ponder and quiet everything else in our lives, which in today's society is harder to do than it used to be, right, we have so much going on with social media, with our phones that are constantly in our hands.
Tamara Anderson 6:07
And so I think it's time, it's important to take the time to do the little things that matter most everyday so that we can satisfy that inner hunger. The second thing that I think we can learn from this story about mana is that we can do those same things every day, and they will nourish us, sometimes I think we as a society are looking for some new cool way to do something. And we're like, oh, that's what I should do. Because the old way it didn't work very good. And, and so this concept that, that we can do the same thing for 40 years, if possible, or if necessary, or more, and get the results that we need.
Tamara Anderson 7:05
So maybe beware of somebody's trying to tell you to do some new and crazy thing to connect to God. It's really those basic things that connect us to God. That daily communing with him, reading the scriptures, saying our prayers, attending church, and other places where you can feel of God's love and commune with Him. Sometimes you may find that on top of a mountain, I know I do. When I go hiking, I love being out in nature, it helps me feel more connected with God. And so putting yourself in places where you can feel God's presence. And so by doing these little things, we satisfy that inner hunger, just like the children of Israel, and getting their tiny bits of mana every day.
Tamara Anderson 7:55
I want to share with you that as I applied this principle, when I was exhausted and worn out when my children were tight, tiny that I felt God strengthened me to hang in there day after day and minute after minute when I didn't feel strong enough to carry on by myself.
Tamara Anderson 8:18
And so I invite you today to do those little things, to pick up those tiny little seeds every day and feed your inner soul. Because those are the ways that we truly connect ourselves with God and satisfy that inner hunger. And once we feel satisfied, once we are converted we are to strengthen our brethren and to go about and serve and love and and we can draw from that inner well and give and serve and love others. And so that's that's the story of the children of Israel and mana that I'd like to share with you today and I invite you to satisfy that inner hunger. If you know someone that could use this message I invite you to share it with them and inspire hope. Thanks for watching.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai