What’s For Dinner?

My husband hit a home run with dinner plans when he asked if he could pick up a specific meal from a specific restaurant for us one evening. In our thirty-one years of marriage, we’ve had plenty of exchanges involving what we’d have for dinner that sound like echoes. What do you want? I don’t care. What do you want? I don’t know. It really doesn’t matter to me. I’ve overheard our married children having this exact conversation with their spouses. It’s comical, really, unless someone’s already hangry.

Choices are an incredible blessing. There must be options in order for there to be a choice. For me to complain about making a choice is the height of ingratitude. The simple fact that I am free to choose what I eat and when and where I eat on a daily basis is an extravagance for which I should be more grateful. Our refrigerator, freezer, and pantry shelves are typically fairly well-stocked and though it may not be what I would necessarily choose to eat, I can always manage more than one meal from the contents.

So I struggle to truly comprehend and appreciate the lesson in Biblical accounts like Israel’s forty years in the wilderness when God miraculously provided manna day after day. This manna couldn’t be canned or preserved except for one day each week by God’s design.

“Then the Lord said to Moses,

“Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you.

Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day.

I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.

On the sixth day they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual.””

Exodus 16:4-5 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/exo.16.4-5.NLT

Our choices are still a test of our obedience to our Creator and Sustainer. God has given us His Word and His Spirit to guide us, and all who choose to honor Him as Lord find Him more than sufficient in every situation. I love the beautiful picture of abundance as described in the book of Leviticus. God moved nations to give Israel a land flowing with milk and honey, but the very best part is His promise to walk with them and call them His own. They had learned to trust God for one day out of every week in the wilderness. When God extends the test to every seventh year in the land of promise, it may seem like a huge leap of faith for Israel, but how we handle that bumper crop in every sixth year is a fair measure of our faith as well.

“If you want to live securely in the land, follow my decrees and obey my regulations.

Then the land will yield large crops, and you will eat your fill and live securely in it.

But you might ask, ‘What will we eat during the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops that year?’

Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land will produce a crop large enough for three years.

When you plant your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the sixth year.

In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new crop is harvested in the ninth year.”

Leviticus 25:18-22 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/lev.25.18-22.NLT

“Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain.

You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.”

Leviticus 26:5 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/lev.26.5.NLT

“You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!

I will live among you, and I will not despise you.

I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

Leviticus 26:10-12 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/lev.26.10-12.NLT

““So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Matthew 6:31-33 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/mat.6.32.NLT