Bread on the ground
“Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from the sky for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law, or not.”Exodus 16:4 · WEB
Six weeks after the sea, the singing has stopped and the complaining has started. There is no food in the desert, and the people say out loud that they wish they had died in Egypt with full stomachs. God's answer is not a lecture. Every morning a fine flake-like thing lies on the ground, and they call it manna, which means roughly what is it? Gather enough for the day, God says — no more. Those who hoard find it crawling with worms by morning. On the sixth day they gather double, because the seventh is rest. For forty years this is how they eat: provision that cannot be stockpiled, so that trust has to be renewed daily. It is the pattern behind a prayer taught much later — give us this day our daily bread.