What Is It? by Edith E. Adams

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 25, 1902

What Is It?

By Edith E. Adams

EDITH E. ADAMS

THIS is what the Israelites said one morning, when they awoke and found lying on the ground about their encampment a small, round, white thing, like a tiny seed, about the size of hoarfrost.

They were very hungry, and God had sent them bread from heaven. They called the name of it “manna.” The Hebrew word they used was “man-hu,” meaning, What is it? “for they wist not what it was.”

And Moses said, “This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat;” but their question gave the name to that bread from heaven, and they went on calling it manna—what is it?

Let us see how the Bible answers this question for us, and remember as we do so that what is true of this bread, is true also of all the bread that the Lord sends from heaven. Because this came to them in an unusual way, they were at first filled with wonder and curiosity. But after they became accustomed to it, they thought no more of it than we do of that which comes daily to our tables, or of the seed, the golden grain that covers the ground at harvest time.

God’s mercies “are new every morning,” but because He does not forget us, we often forget Him. It would be well for us, every time we gather round our tables, or take any food at all, to ask with reverence the question that the Israelites did. And then, remembering that it is bread from heaven, think what God has told us about the bread that He gives.

The Israelites “did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that went with them: and that Rock was Christ.” When they ate the manna from heaven, and drank the water from the rock, they were feeding on Christ.

It is just so when you take any food that God gives you. All that He made for man’s food comes from seed. But the plants which produce the seeds all come from one Seed, by whose life all things live. That Seed is the divine Word which went forth into the earth in the beginning, to cause everything to grow.

If we do not see this, we get, in the bread that He gives, only the outward form that feeds and strengthens our bodies for a time.

But when the Spirit of God fills our hearts (and He has promised to give this to all who ask Him), we can then see Him in everything else. We can discern Him, and feed upon Him, in the food that He gives us; we can hold sweet communion with Him in every meal, and receive through the Spirit the gift of His everlasting life.

“I am that bread . . . which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.”