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As a kid in the eighties before everybody had caller ID, we would make really silly prank calls, my friends and I might dial up a random person from the phone book. And while the two of

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us huddled close to the big clunky receiver, one of us would ask in our deepest sounding voice is your refrigerator running and maybe even before the person could answer. Yes, we would stumble over the punch

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line giggling uncontrollably. Well, you better go catch it. We thought we were so funny, but you see, the punch line only works under the assumption that the person's refrigerator was, in fact working

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because that's the working assumption we all have of refrigerators . We assume that every home has a working fridge to keep our food fresh for days at a time . So our homes are always stocked with food.

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Now, I raise this assumption for two reasons. The first is that our text has no such assumption . The Israelites do not have working refrigerators ready to hold their food and keep it fresh for them for

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days at a time. They're wandering in a wilderness after recently having been freed from slavery in Egypt. They have no such access to readily available foods. And the second reason I bring this up is personal

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. My refrigerator stopped working 10 days ago. So my assumptions about the availability of food have been called into question on Sunday a week ago in the evening after I had gone to the store that morning to

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fill up with a week's worth of groceries. I opened the freezer to discover that my£5 bag of blueberries, the frozen blueberries, white frost outlining the little round berries inside, which wasn't normal. I

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squeezed a berry from outside the bag and felt it squish beneath my fingers while a truly frozen berry would have felt hard. So something was wrong. I shut the freezer and looked up online what to do

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if your refrigerator stops working and looked up appliance repair services. Now, we were really lucky. We found a company that was able to come out the very next day. A repair person from Sears dusted

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off the coils of the condenser behind our refrigerator, which apparently you're supposed to do every six months. But who knew he thought that might solve the problem since everything else seemed to be working and there were

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no alarm messages from the computer because everything is run by computer these days. So he left and told us to wait another night and in the morning, hopefully, you'll see something frozen in your freezer.

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The next morning though, I opened the freezer and there was a pool of water around all of the things, the melted ice cream, the frozen Indian meals, the box of pizza, everything was in

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a pool of water. Our refrigerator was broken. So on Tuesday, as we prepared to put our trash out onto the road for city pick up, we had to empty out the meat from the fridge

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that I had just bought Sunday morning to feed our family for the week. Everything from the freezer that had been in cardboard boxes that had now turned to mush from sitting in water. All of that food

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literally going to waste. We tried to save what we could milk yogurt some vegetables and coolers, surrounded by ice, but so much was lost. And then I remembered this reading and what we've been hearing

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about the Israelites complaining in the wilderness. And I thought to myself, I can totally relate. I mean, not really, I'm not living in a wilderness. I'm not a month out of slavery.

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I'm not blindly following two leaders who have taken me out from everything that I just knew, but I was complaining. So we had that in common. I was really mad that my refrigerator wasn't working here

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. I was hunting to depend on food just that I could keep for the day. Nothing could I store until tomorrow and trust that it would remain fresh . What I needed for this day was all that

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I could have. Now, the Israelites were complaining because they had come from a place where while they worked seven days a week, at least they could count on food. Our translations of flesh pots doesn't

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quite do it justice. But apparently they were fed something on a regular basis. And now after carrying what they could out of Egypt, all their supplies were depleted. And now what were they going to

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do? They were in a wilderness, not a lush farmland where they could go and pick up food along the way. Picture the scene from that movie where Matt Damon literally is left on Mars and has

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to try and grow food on a waterless planet. Picture that image of miles of dry land and rocky terrain and now picture that scene filled with thousands upon thousands of hungry, maybe hungry people. They've been

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led miles from the place where they could at least count on regular meals. Where were they going to get food to feed all these people? But then before Moses and Aaron can intervene, God responds,

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God hears their complaining and rather than getting mad at them, God immediately goes to Moses and tells him I'm going to give the people bread from heaven. I've listened to their cries and I'm going to feed

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them. So God provides for the people and says , so that you can see the glory of the Lord. So God feeds the people, Manna every morning as the dow clears it is there on the

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ground to be gathered for six days, they gather Manna only what they need for that day. And on the sixth day, they gather twice as much so they can rest on the seventh. Now,

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as I was cleaning out my refrigerator, throwing out food or quickly trying to make use of£5 of thawed blueberries. I thought what is the message of the manna? I mean, what does this story

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about Manna mean? For me the previous week, I had met with rabbi Neil Bluff, the leader of congregation, Ada aim here in Austin in preparation for videos on Jewish Christian relations that we'll be making

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in October since I was working on the sermon at the time, I wanted to ask him about it . I said, I noticed in the reading that God promised is to give them twice as much man

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on the sixth day. So they didn't have to collect it on the seventh. But this takes place before God commands the people to keep the Sabbath in that command comes several chapters later. When Moses receives

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the 10 commandments on Sinai, what's going on here ? And Rabbi Bluff told me that yes, the Manna and Sabbath are closely connected. The message of the man has to do with trusting God as the

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God of time, who provides for our needs and who is the source of all that we receive and who wants us to think about where our resources come from. And that we need to think of these

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resources in terms of justice. With the Manna, everyone had access, everyone could receive what they needed and everyone had access to that seventh day of rest . This was before the Sabbath was understood as a

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day for worship and instead was intended for a day of rest. The Israelites had never known a day of rest in Egypt. They worked seven days a week, working hard, collecting straw to turn into

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bricks, day in and day out. And now instead of collecting straw, they were collecting their daily bread and they had a chance to rest on the seventh day. So as I reflected on Rabbi Bluff's

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words, after my refrigerator broke, I thought, what does it mean to receive daily bread and to be able to store enough of it so we can rest? I mean, clearly, it brings a

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peace of mind to have a working refrigerator where you can store food that you need for several days and then not have to go to the grocery store. But now that my refrigerator was broken, I felt

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an interruption in my relatively low stress way of getting food to eat. So what was this broken refrigerator ? It seemed a stumbling block for me allowing me to take for granted that I could store food for

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several days. What was this broken fridge teaching me about Manna? In the text, God speaks of the man as a way to test the Israelites whether they will follow God's instructions. This word test is

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used and I wondered why is it that people view God as a God who tests? Why do we have to feel that God is testing us? Obviously , it irked me because if I were faced with

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such a test, would I even pass? Did I have the kind of faith that would pass a test in trusting in God? I fear the answer would be no, I depend too much on things

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like my refrigerator. I depend too much on all of the other easy to access resources at my disposal . I can purchase what I need. I have a roof over my head. I am not living

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in a wilderness and I live in a society where there are so many behind the scenes people who work daily to make resources available for me to purchase and enjoy. Richard is the name of the repair man

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who came last Monday. Less than 24 hours after I discovered the fridge wasn't working. He's the one who thought vacuuming the condenser coils again, something you're supposed to do every six months that this would save

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us the cost of a new compressor. Now, while on Tuesday, we noticed the pool of water so it obviously hadn't worked. So I called and spoke to three different women who were working in call

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centers, perhaps half a world away who scheduled another repair person to come out to our house the earliest available time being Wednesday. So in the meantime, I went twice a day to the local grocery store

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to buy ice to replace the melting ice in our cooler. So the food we had kept would stay fresh. On Wednesday afternoon, the repairman window came to our house verified our compressor was indeed broken and

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went to work replacing it using a welding tool and pressurized piping to make sure none of the freon would escape once the new compressor was back online. After several hours of loud sounds, pops and hisses and

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even open flames coming from my kitchen. He said it was working again so we could put food back in as soon as the next morning. So Wednesday night as my family ate pizza, we had ordered

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from Domino's ready in only 10 minutes. I ate my gluten free slices, still feeling tired from the emotional stress of the day but not really thinking at all about what I was putting in my mouth.

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I had missed the message of the man. We are so far from seeing God as the source of all our sustenance. It is so easy to see the things that nourish our bodies as what we ourselves

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deserve and can control unless we have truly experienced living as those who cannot count on having food to eat , to fill their hunger. Then we do not truly know hunger and we can avoid the sense of

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dependence and vulnerability that such hunger reveals about our true state. Because while losing the food in my fridge , I still had access to food. I could still keep some of my food from going bad by

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keeping it in coolers. We never lost our gallon of milk, for instance, we never went hungry . But instead what I lost was the illusion of control that slips so easily into our lives. The

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illusion that we are independent beings free from the constraints of outside forces or machines, the illusions that we provide for ourselves, that illusion was lost albeit briefly . But in that moment, when that illusion was

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lost, I could see everything is Manna. All is food from heaven. The kale we cooked so hastily that first day. So it wouldn't go bad that kale was grown in a field harvested by workers

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packaged in a facility shipped to my store, put out on shelves by grocers working in the night to set out fresh food. Those frozen blueberries that I quickly turned into cop to my children's amazement because I

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don't really bake. These blueberries had been grown dependent on water and sunlight harvested by hand washed and frozen by unseen workers who got that bag to a freezer at my store where I bought it the day my

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refrigerator broke all of this is food from heaven. My refrigerator, it was made by someone designed by someone sold to me by someone working at a Sears store no longer in business and now repaired by two

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different technicians. All of those hands working together helped provide me with a machine that helped me to gather and store food for myself and my family all is Manna, the pizza we ate that last night before

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our repaired fridge was cool enough and ready for fresh food. That pizza too came from heaven. Yes , it came from Domino's. But behind all of those mechanisms of pizza makings, all of those ingredients

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in the hands that made them came from heaven. Now, the morning following the repair, the fridge was freezing appropriately. I pulled out a water bottle I had put in the night before and it was

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rock solid. I was so excited. My husband went to the grocery store stocked up on the foods that would take us through the weekend, including a new tub of ice cream to replace the soupy mess

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we had tossed earlier in the week. Thursday night felt so refreshing. We had everything working again. I even considered whether my sermon needed to be reworked . Friday came and we were able to eat fresh

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food. Phil had bought the day before. But by Friday evening, my kids pulled out the ice cream and noticed it was looking really soft again. Uh Oh, that didn't bode well, I told

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everyone not to worry. Maybe we had just opened it too many times that day. Everything should be fine, but I went to bed worried, I woke up in the middle of the night 3 a.m.

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thinking about the fridge and the busy day I had ahead, I went to the kitchen, opened the freezer and all of the new items, more frozen fruit. The tub of ice cream were thawed and

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melted. I rushed out to the 24 hour 7-Eleven gas station and bought three bags of ice. It was back to the ice chests for the cold items that we could save. I pulled out the meat

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that my husband had bought the day before, hoped we could keep it fresh in time. Maybe there was a way of still saving it after I moved the milk and the yogurt back into the ice chest

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. I sat down to catch my breath and I remembered everything is nana even the refrigerator, this Hulk appliance that was only six years old with a brand new compressor which still failed to keep our food cold

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. This too was Manna and when Manna didn't fall like it didn't on the seventh day for the Israelites , it was because they had enough from the previous day. We too had enough. We would be

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fine. We didn't have a working fridge. We don't still have a working fridge, but we will be fine. Everything is Manna, but it doesn't feel good to have to acknowledge your dependence. It

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doesn't feel good to lose the illusion that food magically stays fresh in your home. It doesn't feel good to have to throw away food or to lose money on ineffective repairs, to have to spend more money

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on a new refrigerator. And to think about our not that old refrigerator taking up space in a landfill , but it makes me aware of how much in our culture goes to waste, how much our illusions

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are costing us. How infrequently we can see the glory of the Lord because our lives are filled with so much stuff. So for that, I'm grateful , I'm grateful for what this experience has brought into

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my life. The challenge to pay more attention to the Manna all around us, to the manner that we take from that we take for granted, the manner that comes from God. And on those days

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when Manna does not fall to know that we have enough, that God has already given us enough and that we will see the glory of the Lord.