33 So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD to be kept for the generations to come.”
We need objects to remember some of the miracles of God. The Lord tells Moses to have Aaron save a portion of the manna in a jar. He does this so that after they have entered the Promised Land future generations will be able to physically see evidence of the miracle. Sometimes, especially when God seems distance, we need to run though our mental index cards and pull out a few miracles of God and look at them. They might be when we prayed to get pregnant after years of frustration, and then the baby came. Or maybe we prayed to survive the horror of abuse and we did. Or the financial crisis of juggling bills after losing your job. Or the devastation of the discovery of an affair. We need to be able to look back and see the Hand of God in our lives and remember. Life includes some days when it is hard to see God at work. For some those days stretch into years. Part of the reason for connection to a community of faith is that we will not all be travelling in a cloud of despair at the same time. We can take turns encouraging and praying with and for each other. Those who aren’t stuck at the bottom of the barrel can lift up jars of God’s miracle for all to see. We can read the Scriptures and hear what God has done. We can take time to share the recent interventions of the Lord in our lives. We can talk to our children about the times when God pulled us through. It is important to remember those times. They give us hope in the present. We read about the parting of the Red Sea or Daniel in the Lion’s Den and we realize that God can rescue.
The Arnold Journey 