The Mennonites taught me to see different nuances in the text, how it shows a God who gives the chosen people decades of practicing what it looks like to value equality, to live in true righteousness/justice. Manna, bread given new every morning, was sent with strict instructions: no hoarding was allowed, no one was allowed to stockpile, to sell, to incur debts against their neighbors. If people tried to set up a black-market manna system, they awoke to see their stockpiles stinking and melted, covered with maggots. Those years in the wilderness with that sweet, ethereal bread was a forty-year
...more
