A STORM OF MANNA
We are tested every day. Every single one of us. Sometimes we are aware of it and pay attention, but more often than not, “the test” goes unnoticed.
I personally can’t remember the last time I went more than 24 hours without having my faith and trust drop to zero at one point. It’s almost becoming a pattern now that I can’t seem to get away from. When I examine why this keeps happening, I get the words “patience”, “time” and “guidance”. Then I am shown yet another picture of me walking on a path, but this time the path is covered in something. As I bend down to look at it, my attention is immediately diverted upwards and I see what appears to be bread crumbs falling from the sky. They all land on the path in such a way that I begin to follow them. But after a few minutes, I stop and put one in my mouth and taste it … it has no flavor. It tastes like nothing at all. So I continue walking, still curious about what this is. Then I have another idea and stop again and get out a magnifying glass. But no matter how much I examine it, I can’t see anything special. It looks just like a piece of grain and nothing more. Then all of a sudden I have the wild thought that this might be the manna I read about in the Bible, the food that fed the Israelites who were exiting from Egypt. However, that story seemed too incredulous to believe. How could a grain that seemed to have no nutritional value at all feed so many people for so long?
I start to walk again, but with every step I become more and more frustrated and angry about this “manna” that keeps falling. It’s not helping me or anyone, and after a few minutes, I stop, sit down and start to cry. I begin to curse the manna and curse the heavens where it is dropping from. Then I look up to the sky and see a man up there with a stubborn face. Without hesitation, I immediately ask him for help … but no matter how much I plead with him, he just shakes his head. This only makes me feel more sorry for myself, and I make a decision right then and there to not help anyone ever again until someone comes and helps me for a change.
After about five minutes of just twiddling my thumbs and playing with the manna, I realize I am too bored to continue with this plan. So I stand up very slowly, shake the manna off my back and look around. I can’t see a damn thing in either direction. It’s become a snow storm of manna, and I begin to walk forward just because I don’t want to risk getting buried in it. As I continue down the path, I start kicking some of it and am surprised when it begins to pile up and stick together. So I stop again, lean down and form a small ball out of it. Why does this hold together when there is nothing but these individual dry pieces of grain? I can’t understand or make any sense of this, but I roll a slightly bigger one, which also holds together perfectly. Then I roll another and another and another, each one bigger than the one before….. until I have a very long line of manna balls going off into the distance.
I am still frustrated, however, because I still don’t understand what the point of this manna is or why so much of it was dropped from heaven on my path. So I decide to walk back to the beginning, to the first small ball I rolled. As I look at it, I shake my head again, still puzzled by all of this. But at just that moment, I see a small twig on the ground and get the idea somehow to connect the first two manna balls with it. This looks right, and I become excited with this new project. Finally, I have a plan …. and soon I have connected every manna ball together with every twig I find along the way.
As I connect the very last manna ball and look back down the long line of them, I get the feeling that there is something very big right behind me. When I turn around, I am astounded to see several gold steps in front of me and a beautiful palace just above the steps. As I begin to climb them, I start to smile because I know this is the Emerald City I have been heading toward all along. I have finally reached it, and I have never seen anything so bright or so beautiful in my entire life.
By now, the manna has finally stopped dropping, and the path I have been following has ended. As I take a step inside the walls of the palace, it suddenly becomes the tropical paradise I have seen in my dreams. I sit down on a log near a waterfall and watch the sun begin to set down, finally confident that I am home where I belong.
Copyright © 2014 (Michelle Parsons, Getting Back on Your Path). All Rights Reserved.
