One of the most annoying days as a Christian is the day you realize that you are totally like the Israelites. You spend your Sunday school years sitting back, eating popcorn, watching the story of the Exodus play out on the flannelgraph board, thinking, “Haha, suckas, get your act together! What losers.” And then, one terrible and wonderful day your eyes are opened and you realize that you are, in fact, one of those “losers.” I’ve been thinking about manna lately. The story is found in Exodus 16 and goes like this: the Israelites are in the desert and are complaining (again), so God, in all His goodness says, “I…

This is a particularly ugly season for South Dakota. The weather has been nice for the past few days, which I am so very thankful for. But then again, it could always blizzard tomorrow. For now, though, the snow has almost melted away. But instead of the green grass my heart is longing for, everything is brown, and muddy, and damp, and broken. It’s like the earth is covered in scars sustained from a bitter fight with a long winter. The trees are the ugliest. We don’t have all that many evergreens around here. Most of our trees are the kinds with, well, leaves. In the wintertime the frost clings…