Quail and Manna

I was really hoping I was going to get a good sleep Saturday night. My adrenals have cratered again from the release of moulds in my body as I continue battling that scourge, and Sunday is always a full day, especially this one with young adults coming out for brunch after church. (This was shortly before COVID-19 social distancing restrictions set in.)

Although I had hoped to get to bed at 9:00, with unexpected company I wasn’t settled until closer to 11:00, and then I couldn’t fall asleep. Too much vitamin C, I think. In the past, taking large doses of this key nutrient has been a sure-fire way to help my adrenals and my energy rally. But if it’s taken too close to bedtime, it can wake me up. I’m sure I wasn’t asleep until after midnight, and I woke up at 4:30. I got up, put on my porridge, and spent some time with the Lord.

It was 6:15 when I headed back up to bed. I was praying, “Lord, if I’m not able to go back to sleep, please sustain me supernaturally.” Jesus said He had food to eat that His disciples knew not of (John 4:32); He was supernaturally sustained by His relationship with God. In Matthew 4:4, AMP, Jesus said, “Man shall not live and be upheld and sustained by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” He was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. His own experience was that, when necessary, the substance of the Word of God was able to sustain and nourish His body.

In the same way, surely if I trust God in this regard, in the absence of sufficient sleep, God’s word is able to refresh and restore my body. I prayed that if I couldn’t have the one He would give me the other. “But then,” I added, “it would be nice to have both!”—and I smiled kind of sheepishly at God.

I got into bed and lay on my back with my hands flat open in a posture of receiving. I heard myself saying, “Lord, I receive not your quail but your manna.” It had such a ring of truth and power as I spoke it that I repeated it quietly over and over.

Both manna and quail were part of God’s provision to the Israelites in the wilderness, but in my mind at that point, quail represented provision of and from this world to meet my physical needs (nonetheless through God). As such, in this moment, it represented sleep. On the other hand, manna represented a provision straight from heaven metabolized into a form sufficient to meet that physical need—in the absence of sleep.

As I lay there, I said, “Lord, I need to receive your provision, but I don’t really know how.” But then I corrected myself and said, “Lord, I do know how; it’s just that it seems so hard—such a discipline to my flesh. What I need to do is simply tell You my need and then lie here expectantly and wait for You and believe You to fulfill it.”

Hmm. Need and expectation. It was making me think of a chapter in my marriage book (Made in Heaven, Fleshed Out on Earth), a chapter called “Needs and Expectations,” which is essentially about how these things can negatively impact a marriage relationship. They can cause very unhealthy dynamics. But how different, it struck me, are needs and expectations within our relationship with God. There, we express to Him our needs, and then we wait with expectation for Him to fulfill them. This makes for a very healthy relationship with God. He wants us to bring Him our needs, and He is pleased when we come to Him with confident expectation. This is a picture of faith, and it moves God’s heart and hand. 

As I continued to pray for God to help me to receive “not the quail but the manna,” He suddenly reminded me that just a few days ago, He had shown me something I’d never realized before. There was not just one time when God sent quail, the time He was angry and smote them with a plague while the flesh was still in their teeth (Numbers Chapter 11, especially verses 31-33). That was the second time. But the first time was the evening before He first sent the manna (Exodus 16:13). In the evening God sent quail that fell in the camp, and in the morning He sent the first of the manna. The Israelites had been complaining about being hungry and God sent them both earthly quail and heavenly manna.

It’s suddenly struck me that I could change my plea from “Help me receive not your quail but your manna” to “Both would be nice, Lord!” I felt He was saying, “There’s no reason you can’t have both sleep and supernatural rejuvenation through My Word.”

And so, gratefully, I was able to fall asleep for another hour. Then I was jarred awake from a heavy slumber by my alarm. I forced myself to throw back the covers immediately, stood up, and then stumbled into the shower. I allowed myself no murmuring and no self-pity, as there is no quicker way to cut oneself off from the provision of God. From then on through the whole day, until 7:00 in the evening when the last of the young adults left, I was marvellously sustained by continuing to trust God.