“What is it?” That’s the question asked by the Israelites when they woke up one morning, fresh off the miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, and discovered a “fine flake like thing” on the ground there in the wilderness of Sin–Exodus 16:14-15. The Hebrew expression ‘what’ is used here as a play on words resulting in the term ‘manna.’ The bread that the Lord faithfully provided for His Covenant people there in the wilderness derives its name from what the people said when they first saw it on the ground. This sweet bread-like substance was the staple meal for the Israelites for forty years, and the Lord’s daily provision for the physical needs of His people sustained them all that time until they finally arrived in Canaan, the Land of Promise.

If we fast-forward through the centuries, the full magnitude of what the Lord did for His people in the wilderness with the manna becomes evident in a spectacular and most unexpected way. In John 6, Jesus provides ‘bread’ for a large multitude of very hungry people–we know this as the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. But immediately following that amazing sign, the very crowd that Jesus fed demanded more proof that He was the divine Son of God. You can read about this in John 6:26-31. The response that Jesus gave to their challenge must have rocked them to the core–“I am the bread of life” (v. 35).