How can we look at God's commandments to commit genocide?

 This week in Come Follow Me we read about the rise and downfall of Saul in the book of Samuel.  One of the most famous scriptures of this week's reading is from Samuel 15:22 "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." On the surface this looks like a great moral of the story.  Saul should have obeyed the Lord instead of disobeying him in order to make more sacrifices. 

One of the podcasters this week, however, pointed out how this simplistic view is problematic. We read the verse, but forget the commandment that Saul was disobeying. "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (15:3)  So the thing that Saul was disobedient to was the command to commit genocide, including killing women, children and babies. It seems from the text that Saul did kill all the women and children, but was being chastised by the Lord for not killing all the animals. 

Of course you can see all the red flags here.  Could the same God who gave the Ten Commandments including "Thou shalt not kill," turn around and command someone to slaughter women and children?  My husband made the observation that after the Ten Commandments are given in Exodus the whole rest of the Old Testament seems to ignore them. 

So how can we wrestle with what seems to be the Lord's command to break his own commandment? Different podcasters I listened to this week had different approaches that I will try to outline here.

1. Literal approach: Yes, God did command them to utterly wipe out their enemies.

    Those who take this approach within the LDS faith try to justify this by saying that the society was so corrupt that it would be unjust of God to let it continue.  Any babies born to that society were doomed to be raised in wickedness. It was better to send all the inhabitants back to God where they might have a chance to change their ways, than to leave them on earth where they would doom themselves and infect others with their wickedness. We need to take the "eternal" perspective instead of just looking at the mortal experience.

2. Historical Hindsight: No, God didn't command them to utterly wipe out their enemies, but when they looked back years later, they imagined that he did and that their failure to do so caused the moral decline of their society that lead to the Babylonian Captivity.

    Those who take this approach say that this history was written during the Babylonian Captivity when the people of Israel where looking back and trying to figure out what went wrong. They see their main sin as turning to idols.  They think, "If only we had utterly destroyed the people of the land, we would not have been tempted to worship their gods and depart from the true worship of Jehovah." Because they believe that would have worked, they project that belief on the past.  They imagine that God did tell them to destroy the other nations, and their failure to do so was their downfall.

3. Historical Hyperbole: God told them to take other lands, but the strength of the command was intensified in accordance to local history-keeping customs.

    I have heard the scholarly opinion that the text of Samuel, (and Kings and Judges) follows the style of other ancient texts from that time period.  It was the style of historians in that era to exaggerate the nature of their conquests.  Not only was a town "conquered," but it was "utterly wiped out."  We use similar ways of talking in English.  When one sports team thoroughly defeats a rival, they might claim "We totally destroyed them" when in reality, no one was destroyed, just defeated. In this opinions the command to destroy women and children is not really what happened, but is told that way to reflect the weightiness of the event.

4. These stories are not histories, but parables.

Believers in this approach don't believe that these narratives represent any real historical event, but are merely symbolic parables constructed by the captive Jews to explain both their own origins and their sad decline into captivity. Saul is not a historical personage, but a character type: someone who started out strong but was corrupted by his own pride. The whole story is a cautionary tale, full of symbolism.  God's command to kill all men, women, children, and animals represents our need to purify ourselves of all our sins, both big and small. We must kill our imperfections no matter how animalistic or innocent they might appear. 

I don't know what the real answer is but I will give my opinion.  I am not a believer in #1.  I can't bring myself to believe God commanded a righteous nation to commit such terrible acts of violence.  Not only would innocents be lost, but the attacking armies would have suffered huge mental consequences of such an act. I don't think anyone can stab a baby and come through emotionally and spiritually intact.  Would God destroy the souls of his servants by making them destroy the bodies of their innocent victims?

I am also not a really going for #4 either.  I do think there must have been some historical basis for the stories in the history books of the Bible. The stories are to complicated and messy to be entirely made up. There is some (though not a huge amount) of archaeological evidence that support the Biblical accounts. Some place names have been found and some names used in the Bible have been found on a few inscriptions. 

So that leaves me considering #2 and #3.  I personally believe that a combination of these two are the most likely answer.  I think there is a literary tradition here that needs to be taken into account.  The stories of the Old Testament really do resemble in tone and language other stories of the same period. They had a culture and morality that wasn't the same as ours and they reflected that culture. I also think that the writer(s) of Samuel were trying to look back and figure out what went wrong so that they could make better decisions in the future. They project their ideas onto the story and claim that commandments came from God. Why else would have Saul failed, unless he disobeyed God?

The final question then, is if these records do not accurately reflect God's real dealings with his people, are they of any value?  That's another hard questions.  I guess my answer is that as I read the Old Testament I do feel inspired by some of the stories and thematic elements. I feel inspired by Joseph's persistent faithfulness.  I feel compassion and kinship with characters who sometimes are righteous and sometimes fall short. I see the good examples and the cautionary tales and examine my own life. This year, especially, I have been encouraged by God's patience with Israel and his unflagging attempts to help and save them despite their wickedness and hope the same efforts will be made for my own imperfect soul.

I think one of the Old Testament's biggest strengths is that it forces us to struggle with the messiness of mortality. No one is perfect. No civilization is completely righteous. Some good people do bad things, and some bad people do good things. It is the way people are. It is complicated and there are lots of grey areas, and there are lots of things we don't understand. Why pretend there isn't? So we wrestle and try to find our own way of hope in belief and faith.

Ruth and Hannah as Types

 I didn't post anything about the book of Judges last week since I did a pretty good post about it in 2022 and didn't have anything new to add. 

This week, however, I have two different things I wanted to post about. I did a post about Ruth in 2022 that covers the basics of the story. One thing I would add to that which I didn't know before, was that one reason Boaz might have been more compassionate toward Ruth is that he understood what it meant for a woman to be a foreigner and convert in Israel.  We learn from Matthew 1:5 that Boaz' mother was Rahab, the "harlot" who hid the spies of Israel in Jericho, and by so doing so was spared and protected when Joshua stormed that city.  Even though Boaz in the book of Ruth seems pretty well of, it might have been difficult for him to find a bride since his mother was foreign and a former prostitute. His kindness to Ruth may reflect his feelings toward his immigrant mother. 

The main thing I saw in the stories of Ruth and Hannah this time was that they can be seen as types.  I wrote before how Sarah's life foreshadowed the future of Israel. Sarah was "sold into Egypt" when her husband claimed she was his sister years before Joseph was sold into Egypt. The fact that the Lord remembered her and provided a way for her to be redeemed foreshadowed Israel's eventual escape from Egypt. This seems like a bit of a stretch unless you remember that throughout the Old Testament the Lord compares his relationship with Israel as a marriage. Later Jeremiah is even commanded to marry a harlot as a symbol of Israel worshiping other gods. I think both Ruth and Hannah's stories foreshadow things that are about to happen to Israel.

First let's talk about Ruth.  She is a Moabite, that is, not a member of the covenant family.  She marries an Israelite and comes to start to understand what Jehovah worship is. When her husband dies, she decides to stay with Naomi and follow the God of Israel rather than the gods of her own culture. Together they go back to Bethlehem and there she impresses and marries an Israelite man and through her the Davidic line is perpetuated.  How does this reflect what is happening is Israel?  Just as Naomi and her family left Bethlehem and traveled to pagan Moab, Israel has left their covenant with the Lord and has gone after idols. They leave because of a famine in Israel. We learn in the book of Judges that there was a famine of righteousness in Israel.  None of the Judges are without flaw, and the final judge, Samson, has truly left the covenants of Israel to follow a foreign path of violence and disregard for the law.

Israel needs a new system of government.  Later in 1 Samuel, we learn that they ask Samuel to find and anoint a king for them because they want to be like other nations (1 Sam 8:20). They are bringing in a foreign form of government just like Naomi is bringing in a foreign bride for Boaz. I think it is no coincidence that it is through Ruth, a foreign import into Israel, that the new foreign form of government, the Kingship, is established though David, her descendant. In other words, just as Naomi went into a foreign land and brought back a bride for Boaz, Israel looked to their foreign neighbors to replace the system of Judges with a King. 

Hannah likewise foreshadows  things that are about to happen in Israel.  Eli is a true High Priest, but his sons are corrupt.  The name Eli, means, Our God, so even though Our God is faithful, his sons, the house of Israel, and particularly the priests of Israel, have become corrupt.  God seeks a true priesthood but cannot find it among the priestly caste. Israel is barren, like Hannah, but when they pray for a king, just as Hannah prays for a son, the Lord grants their request.  Hannah gets a son, and Israel gets a king.  But Hannah doesn't get to keep her son.  After a few short years, he is given up to a lifetime of service in the temple as Hannah promised. Likewise, Israel does not get to keep its kingship.  Saul, David and Solomon rule over Israel as a united kingdom, but on Solomon's death the tribes of Israel fragment, and never again is Israel united under one ruler. In other words, even though Hannah rejoices at having a son, and Israel rejoices in having a king, for both the joy is short lived. 

It isn't as close of a connection as the story of Sarah predicting the story of Israel, but I still think in both cases,  God is using the marriage relationships described in these stories as symbols of his relationship with Israel. 

Book of Joshua

 This week we have done a cursory study of the book of Joshua.  Four years ago I wrote a blog post about the symbolism in the conquest of the city of Jericho. It is a pretty good post about the purpose of the book of Joshua, and some symbolism of the fall of Jericho. Some of what I wrote there bears repeating.  The Book of Joshua was written many years after the fact, and was written for a specific purpose: i.e to give Israel a pattern for covenant behavior that leads to God's help and favor. It is written in historic hyperbola.  In Joshua it states that the Israelites totally destroyed various populations, but then later in Joshua and Judges, these very cities are mentioned as if they are still existing communities. For example, in Joshua 11 the Israelites destroy the village of Hazor and burn it to the ground, but in Judges 4, Deborah conquers it again.  In Joshua 10, Hebron is destroyed, but in Joshua 15 it is given to Caleb as an inheritance. It seems clear that when the book of Joshua states that a town was totally destroyed, it means that Israel had some kind of victory there.

There were a few other things that podcasters mentioned this week that I want to mention here. In my 2022 post I mentioned that there was no evidence that there was a walled city at Jericho at the time that Israel left Egypt during the late bronze Age. Kerry Muhlestein in The Scriptures are Real said that he worked on a Jericho excavation and there is evidence that Jericho existed as a walled city in the late bronze age, but that one of the main archeologists that adamantly denies that it did exist then purposefully denied the evidence because of her own bias. So that was interesting.  

Still, I don't know if proving that Jericho was a real city or not is super important.  I stand by my earlier exertion that the book of Joshua was written, or at least edited, by a later author who used folk stories about the founding of Israel in the promised land to teach about the importance of covenant obedience. Twice in Joshua there are formal covenant ceremonies.  The first is at the beginning of the book in Chapter 5. After the people cross the Jordan river, the males are circumcised (2), then they kept the passover (v. 10) during which they would have recounted the story of the Exodus. Then Joshua meets the angel of the Lord (v. 15). 

The second is in Joshua 24.  Joshua knows he is about to die, so he gathers the people in Shechem where the Ark of the Covenant is.  Joshua reminds them again about their history, going this time clear back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (v. 2-4). Then he recounts all the Lord did for them since they left Egypt, and came into the Promised Land (v. 6-13).  Then he says, "Therefore, fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth...Choose thee this day whom ye will serve...but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (v 14-15)  The people answer and promise that they will serve Jehovah (v. 24).  Finally the story states, "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elder that outlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel." (v. 31)  It is a "tada!" statement,  "Look, this is what it means to serve the Lord." 

The Shema

 This week we read chapters from the book of Deuteronomy as part of Come Follow Me.  When I was in college I used to think of the Book of Deuteronomy as "ether in print."  There were  actually a few times when I was having trouble falling to sleep because of stress or anxiety, so I started reading Deuteronomy and then was able to nod off.  I don't hold that opinion any more, and have found much of interest in the book.

Tradition holds that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, but most scholars believe that it was probably passed down orally until much later.  Some scholars associate it with the text found my Josiah when he was restoring temple worship in Israel (2 Kings 22:8).  When Josiah read it he recognized that it foretold that Israel would be destroyed because they did not keep their covenants with the Lord and followed after idols.  Josiah was so upset his tore his clothes (a sign of deep despair).  A few years after Josiah's reign, Israel was taken into captivity. 

One of the main jewels of the Book of Deuteronomy is the Shema. It is the text of a covenant or commandment given from the Lord to the people of Israel right before entering the "promised land." The Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 and is called the Shema because the first word of 6:4 is "shema", which means "hear" or "attend".  It contains a passage that Jesus later quoted when a lawyer asked him what was the greatest commandment: 

"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all they soul and with all they might." (v. 5) (see also Matt 22:37)

This is a notoriously difficult passage to translate. The word לבב, means heart, but in the Hebrew language the heart isn’t the center for emotion like it is in English, (that’s the abdomen). The heart is the center of true understanding and devotion.  

The word soul, נפש, comes for the word for your neck.  When the Lord creates Adam, he breaths into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The neck it where that breath, symbolizing your spirit, goes in and out of your body. When breath stops, life stops. Even though this word means neck, it is used as an idiom for your essential self in the Bible more than it is used to represent your physical neck.

The last word, מאדך (me'odecha) comes from an adverb meaning "very" or "a lot." When God finished creating the world and he said it was “very good” the term for very is מאד, me'od (Genesis 1:31). But here it isn’t used as an adverb, but as a noun. That last letter "ך" is a suffix that means "your". The the word means something like "your very-ness" or "your much-ness". It isn’t used in this form anywhere else in the whole Old Testament, only this passage. I think the writer couldn’t come up with a word strong enough to express how much of yourself you should use to worship God, so he made up one. 

The author here is using amazingly strong words to try to communicate how much we should love the Lord and how faithfully we should serve him. I think it is why this prayer has endured a central tenet of Jewish worship and is so powerful and meaningful for Jewish people today.

Of course, because Jesus repeats it in the New Testament, it is also a powerful part of Christian worship. Every Christian must ask themselves if we worship God with all our heart (devotion), soul (essential being) and me'odecha.

Shema Israel

Jesus is the GOAT: a look at the Day of Atonement

This week in Come Follow Me we read about a couple of the sacrifices regularly conducted in the Tabernacle. This year I have been able to see more than ever before how all of these ancient practices, although they seem a bit barbaric to us, were actually pointing to the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is as if God was sitting up in heaven with Mother God, and trying to come up with as many ways as possible to foreshadow the life and mission of Jesus. They tried using every sense--taste, smell, touch, sound, sight. They used a variety of ceremonies and places--the altar of sacrifice, the altar of incense, the laver, the show bread, the menorah, the curtains... everything foreshadowing some aspect of Jesus' life and mission as our Savior. 

I can't go into all of them in one post, so I wanted to talk about the Day of Atonement. It is one of the high holy days in Judaism, and the only time that anyone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. It is explained in Leviticus 16:2-22.  The high priest first made a sin offering for himself, washed himself, and changed into specific clothing to represent his ritualistic purity. Then he took two goats and presented them at the door of the Tabernacle. There they cast lots to establish which goat will be sacrificed and which will be set free as the scapegoat. The first goat was offered up as a sin offering for all the people. The high priest brought the blood of the offering into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat (the cover of the Ark of the Covenant). Finally, he went out of the Holy Place, confessed over the live goat all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and then sent him off into the wilderness. 

Some of the symbolism here is really clear.  The first goat represents Jesus whose blood atones for the sins of the people.  Just as Jesus will advocate before the throne of God for us, the blood of the first goat is placed on the Mercy Seat, which represents the throne of God. This symbolic act says, "Look father, I have given my blood for these people, therefore have mercy on them."

But what of the other goat? The sins of the House of Israel are ritualistically placed on the second goat and that goat is taken out of the camp.  One obvious symbolism is that the second goat also represents Christ.  He takes upon him our sins and then removes them from the community. By his departure (i.e. his death) the community is cleansed of sin. 

But why does one goat die and one goat live?  Jesus died for our sins (first goat) and thus reconciles us to God.  He also takes away our sins, like the second goat, but where does he go with them?  Does he pass them off to another community?  Is it understood that he would die in the wilderness?  One Jewish commentary, Mishna Yoma 6:6, suggests that the scapegoat was pushed off a cliff.  This symbolized that those sins were permanently removed out of the community in a way that they wouldn't come back. 

What if,  however,  there is another foreshadowing here.  Maybe the scapegoat represents what Jesus did after his death.  The casting out of the scapegoat does happen after the sacrifice of the first goat. We know from the scriptures that after he was killed, Jesus went and ministered to the spirits in spirit prison (1 Peter 3: 19-20). Couldn't that be like a wilderness of type? We also understand that Jesus visited his other "sheep" (John 10:16). From a Biblical point of view, that could represent the Gospel going to the Gentiles. From a Book of Mormon point of view, it could represent Jesus visiting the saints in the Americas. Both of these groups could be metaphorically on the other side of a barren wilderness because they were separate and different from the community where Jesus taught during his ministry.

This is all a bit of a stretch. None of the podcasters I listened to this week brought up this idea as a possible symbolism of the scapegoat.  Still, who knows? There has to be some reason why there are two goats and one is left alive. In all the other sacrifices, the animals are killed. 

It is easy to see symbolism if you are looking for it, and it is easy to take it too far.  One might even suggest that a "goat" is used in this sacrifice instead of a sheep or bull because God knew that 3000 years later in English the term "G.O.A.T" would be an acronym for Greatest of All Time, and Jesus was certainly the greatest man of all time. That's silliness, of course, but it could make a good t-shirt, especially for those who know their Old Testament.  In a way it explains the symbolism of all the sacrifices of the Levitical worship: "Jesus is the GOAT". 

A Kingdom of Priests

When the children of Israel arrive at Mount Sinai, the Lord tells them "You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself.  Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom priests, and an holy nation" (Exodus 19:4-6)

Did this happen to the House of Israel in the Old Testament?  In a way it did, but in a limited scale.  In Exodus 19 the Lord told Moses to bring the people to the bottom of the mountain so they could hear his voice. The people came, and they saw the lightning and thunder on the mountain, and heard the voice of the Lord but it sounded to them like a trumpet. (v 18-19)  Then in Exodus 24, Moses, Aaron, and 72 others were admitted onto the mountain where "They saw the God of Israel...And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand; also they saw God and did eat and drink." (v 9-11) These experiences distinguished these people as witnesses of God. They were singled out as a special group of people, or "treasure" because they had this experience and entered into a covenant with God.

Most of the House of Israel, however, refused to receive the full blessing the God wanted to give them. When Moses came down from the mountain with the Law, "All the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said to Moses, Speak thou with us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.  And Moses said unto the people, Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off." (Exodus 20: 18-21)  The people were too afraid to listen to the Lord directly and enter his presence. Then, soon after they feared because Moses had been the in Mountain talking to the Lord for a long time.  They made a golden calf and worshiped it when God had expressly commanded them not to make any images. (Exodus 32) They are not ready to become a "nation of priests", so the Lord creates a subset of priests to serve them. 

The Lord commands the people to build the tabernacle, and then consecrates Aaron and his sons to be priests to serve in the Tabernacle (Exodus 28).  The Levites and descendants of Aaron continued to server in the Tabernacle, and then in the Temple, for hundreds of years until Herod's Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.  In that way, the House of Israel partially fulfills the command to be "kingdom of priests, and a holy nation," but the priesthood was limited to a select few who officiated in the temple. The other tribes of Israel depended on the temple workers to help them perform ordinances and make covenants.

So what about today?  Is there a "kingdom of priests" today?  I only know of one church that invites all members to become priests and priestesses. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invites all worthy young men to be ordained as priests beginning at age 16. All worthy adults are washed and anointed to become priests and priestesses in holy temples.  In the ancient temple, only the high priest may enter the Holy of Holies once a year. In modern temples all worthy adults are invited to symbolically pass through the temple veil and enter the Lord's presence when they receive their temple endowment. In a very real way the members of the LDS church fulfill the Lord's request to be a "kingdom of priests".

So if members are part of this "kingdom of priests" what are our responsibilities? In ancient days the priests made it so that all the house of Israel could perform the ordinances required by the Judaic Law. That is what the modern LDS church is offering to the whole world today. They recognize that all peoples and cultures have truth and their own kinds of relationships with God, but only in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can people recieve and perform the ordinances, and make the ritualistic covenants they need to fulfill God's plan for them.  That is why we build so many temples.  That is why we send our young people and older people to serve as missionaries.  We are the kingdom of priests that the Lord is sending out serve the entire world.   

A Closer Look at Manna

 For my Sunday School lesson today I decided to focus on the parting of the Red Sea and the bestowal of Manna in the wilderness. It made me look closer at Manna, how it was described, and the rules about how it was to be gathered and eaten.  

First of all, what was Manna.  There are a few different words and phrases that described it.  In Exodus 16:31 we read that "it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." in Exodus 16:14 we learn that it was "a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground." We also learn in 16:21 "and when the sun waxed hot, it melted."  I have to admit that the first thing that came to my mind with this description was Dipp'n Dots.  We learn elsewhere, however, that they would "bake" it and "seeth" or boil it. So it wasn't Dipp'n Dots. For my class, I made a honey graham cracker recipe, crumbled the dough, and cooked it. It wasn't white like real manna, but the students enjoyed gathering it up from the butcher paper I had spread on the floor.

My attempt to make Manna taught me something about the message of the Manna.  I think the reference to Coriander in Exodus 16:31 refers to the size of the bits of Manna because it is followed by the phrase, "and the taste...". Here is a picture of Coriander seed.

As you can see, it is pretty small.  I think a modern American would say it is about the size of pepper corns. The Lord tells them that they are to gather one omer every morning per person(16:15) , and the chapter says that it was found on the ground (v. 14).  An omer is believed to be about two quarts. 

So think about what it would take to gather two quarts of something the size and shape of a peppercorn.  They couldn't just scoop it up, or they would get a handful of dirt mixed in with their Manna.  They would have to bend down, pick up each piece, one at a time, and put it into their container.  After that they would then have to either grind and cook it as bread or boil and eat it.

In John 6: 25-40 Jesus compares himself to Manna, the bread of life.  Several of my podcasters, and materials in the Come Follow Me manual talked about how just as the children of Israel had to gather Manna each day for physical sustenance, we have to give ourselves spiritual Manna each day to stay spiritually strong. If gathering Manna is a symbol of diligently seeking God's spirit, what do the details of Chapter 16 teach us?

First of all, we need to feed our spirits every day. We can't gather enough spiritual food on Sunday to last us through the week.  If we try to rest on yesterday's spiritual laurels, it could go rotten in our souls.  

Second, the daily spiritual experiences we seek are not necessarily large.  Spiritual health is based on many small acts of devotion, like picking up the many pieces of Manna in an omer.  These could include saying prayers, daily scripture reading,and small acts of service. Each is another seed of the bread of life. 

Third, to collect spiritual sustenance, we have to humble ourselves.  The people gathering manna had to bend over, probably to their knees, just to see the Manna in order to pick it up. It took physical effort and focus. If we don't bend over, examine closely, and focus, we are likely to end up with a metaphorical handful of dirt instead of the bread of life. 

Finally, if we do humble ourselves, gather spiritual experiences daily, and focus our lives on Christ, the Lord does send us, each day, what we need to get through the day. In the Lord's Prayer Jesus taught his disciples, "Give us this day our daily bread." He will sustain us.  Maybe we aren't eating Thanksgiving dinner every day, but we aren't starving to death either.  He is faithful and will provide. 

We get the impression from the scriptures that Manna was not only nutritious, but also delicious.  The scripture describes it like "cakes of honey" and "bread made with oil", (think doughnuts). Likewise our daily communion with God can also be a delicious part of our lives. It will sustain us and help us get through whatever wilderness we might encounter.