I was thinking about seasons today. We're getting ready to head into spring, and our seasonal change is right around the proverbial corner of the calendar (along with all the allergies accompanying it, yay).
Before I get into that, though, let me tell you a story. When I was a kid, I thought the most fun thing in the world would be to get a set of crutches. Swinging along on top of two sticks: entertainment for hours! A neighbor across the street fell and broke her leg once, and she had to use crutches for a while. Sometimes I'd run over to play, and while she sat on the porch, I tried out her crutches. She was a good deal shorter than I was, so it wasn't the most comfortable, but I got to experience the crutches without the pain of a broken limb.
It wasn't until I slipped on the ice in a parking lot the year I went to Rosedale Bible College that I got to get my very first pair of crutches. No broken legs, but a bad sprain that made the doctor tell me he was sending me back to the dorms with crutches.
Everyone looked at me with pity, but I was secretly thrilled: crutches! I've always wanted crutches!
Here's something I learned: Crutches, shoved without mercy under the arms, chafe the skin raw. By the end of Day #1 (I was supposed to stay on them for a week), I had bloodstains on the inside of my shirt where the skin had broken open. Day #2, I tried to be more careful, hobbling where I could, using the crutches less, but for the long treks across campus, I still needed to use them.
More blood and chafing ensued. By Day #3, I left my crutches in the dorm. I wimped out; I couldn't do it anymore. I hobbled and limped places, but I didn't want to subject myself again to the pain of them. In most ways, the crutches were worse than the injury.
I was going to go on to Exodus 17 today, but yesterday, as I read Exodus 16, the Lord pointed out a verse near the end that I've been thinking about all yesterday and again this morning: "So Moses said to Aaron, 'Take a jar and put an omer (roughly half a gallon) of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come."
Before I get to what was so fascinating about this verse and how it applies, let me tell you about what went down this morning:
The Lord gave me a word about crutches the other day for a friend, and this morning, He continued in much the same vein, only it was a word for the church, for His followers.
As I prayed this morning, I had a sense that I was wrestling, as Jacob did in Genesis 32. A man came to Jacob one night and wrestled with him until daybreak. The struggle was real, the fight was a long one, and finally, the man touched Jacob's hip socket so his hip was wrenched. And even after that, Jacob wouldn't let him go.
The man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
And Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man said: "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
"Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.'
...The sun rose above [Israel] as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip."
As I prayed this morning, the Lord didn't touch the socket of my hip, but I heard Him say: "Are you ready to limp?"
When Jacob finished wrestling with the Lord, he walked with a limp, but his name was changed from "one who deceives" to "wrestles with God." And in that limp is a testimony that is visible to the nations: "This one, this one, wrestled with God, face to face."
The Lord took me over to Esther 4:12-14: "When Esther's words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: 'Do not think that because you are in the king's house, you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you are come to royal position for such a time as this?'"
Esther's "such a time as this" was the season the Lord was requiring fruit from her. All her life, God walked with her and her family. All her life, Esther had been taught about the Lord her God, and she served Him. But this time, this time, was her season of fruit.
From the book of Esther, I went to Psalm 1 again, and read it with fresh eyes: "He..." the "he" who has delighted himself in the Lord and in His Word, who has kept himself from evil... "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither."
The season of fruit.
This "he" walks faithfully according to the first couple of verses, but the season of fruit is coming.
Then I went to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. There, I read about the Lord's exact timing: "There is a time for everything and a
season for every activity under heaven."
The writer gives a wonderful bookend list of most of life: "A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."
Season of fruit.
Y'all, this is a season of overcoming. We've been "hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
This is a season of overcoming, of not letting go until the Lord blesses us. It's a season of digging our roots in and clinging to the rock until the flood waters pass.
The limp, the limp, is our testimony.
We rid ourselves of crutches so our testimony is crystal clear. We have seen God face to face. We have wrestled with God and walk with a limp until the final day when we live in our new bodies, when we sit at the glorious, final banqueting table, where we eat of the hidden manna.
Moses said to Aaron, 'Take a jar and put an omer (roughly half a gallon) of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come."
Aaron hid the manna in the Ark of the Covenant.
The hidden manna shows up in Revelation 2:17: "To him to overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it."
Jacob's new name was Israel, and he overcame. We are invited to overcome, to present our new name at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
So Aaron hid the manna when he packed it away in the Ark of the Covenant. Hebrews 9:4 tells us what was in the Ark: the hidden manna placed in a golden vessel, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. All together, these things were called the Testimony, and the artifacts in the Ark were used as a witness to the nation of Israel, a testimony, to remind them of what God had done for them in leading them out of Egypt, out of bondage, in leading them to the Promised Land. There's so much rich symbolism here!
Our testimony isn't hidden. Our limp is obvious. In season, our fruit is known. It doesn't rot on the ground; it's given to the nations.
Where there is light, though, darkness huddles on the perimeter. We see it in Daniel 5, where Belshazzar, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, gave a great banquet for his nobles. He gets drunk and orders the gold and silver vessels Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem to be brought out, and Belshazzar and all his nobles, his wives, and his concubines drank from these.
Golden vessels from the Temple in Jerusalem might very well have included the golden vessel containing the hidden manna, placed in the Testimony, the Ark of the Covenant, as a reminder of Israel's salvation.
Israel, as a reminder, means "wrestles with God." Israel, both the man and the nation, walked with a limp as a testimony of his face-to-face struggle with the Lord.
So when this flagrant blasphemy happened, when Belshazzar toasted "the gods of silver and gold" with the Lord's gold and silver vessels from the Temple in Jerusalem... God brought justice and judgment. Daniel 5:5 says: "Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall."
This same word suddenly is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:3: "While people are saying: 'Peace and safety,' destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape."
Then the Lord showed me a picture of a treasure high above my head, on top of a tall pillar in a dark cavern. A light shone through a crack in the ceiling directly on the treasure. I could see the treasure, but I couldn't make out what it was, and I asked the Lord, "What is it?"
The Lord answered: "That's what manna means: 'What is it?'"
And I saw two hands breaking a loaf of bread. The Lord said, "I am the
Bread of life, the
hidden Manna, and you of the new name, you who have wrestled with God and walked with a limp as your testimony, will eat with Me when you present your new name at the banquet feast of the Lamb."
It took all of that for me to hear what I think I'm supposed to say: Church, our testimony is our limp. Our vessels are made of clay. Our treasure is the One with Whom we wrestle; it is not the fight itself. God gives us a season or seasons of fruit; we are to "preach the Word," to be "prepared in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2).
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