Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 103 · April 13
Moses Does the Arithmetic
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Is the LORD’s hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.”
Picture someone at the kitchen table late at night, with the bills spread out and a calculator beside them. They add it all up three times, and every time the answer is the same: there is not enough.
Moses had a day like that, and he did his sums too. In Numbers 11 the people are weeping, "every man in the door of his tent." They miss "the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." Moses has already asked God to kill him rather than carry the burden of these people any longer. Then God promises them meat for a whole month, and Moses answers with a head count: "The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen." "Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them?"
God's reply is one question and one promise: "Is the LORD's hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not." Waxed short means grown too short to reach.
Now read what Moses watched next, because this is where many people stop the story too soon. A wind from the LORD brought quails from the sea and let them fall around the camp, "as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth." The people gathered them all that day, all that night and all the next day. "And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people." They buried their dead there, and the place was named after their craving. God's hand was not too short. What it gave them was the very thing they had demanded, while they despised the manna He was already giving them day after day.
Honest sums followed by the wrong conclusion is a fair account of Moses on his worst day, and yet God did not strike him down for it. He answered him. So may God give you what He has truly promised, and spare you what you have been demanding. May He keep you where you can see, as Moses did, "whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not." And when your own sums come out short, may you remember that His hand never has.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 103 is No Longer Strangers (Ephesians 2:19).