Breakfast from Heaven

The people of Israel were traveling through a big, hot desert. They had no farms, no stores, and their food was running out. Instead of trusting God to help them, they started complaining to Moses. 'We're going to starve out here!' they cried. 'At least in Egypt we had food to eat!' They forgot how mean the Egyptians had been to them. God heard their complaining, but instead of being angry, He decided to do something amazing. He told Moses, 'I'm going to make food rain down from heaven! Every morning there will be special bread on the ground, and every evening I'll send birds for meat.' That evening, just like God said, a huge flock of quail birds flew into the camp. The people caught them and had meat for dinner. The next morning, something very strange appeared on the ground. It looked like little white flakes, kind of like frost. 'What is it?' everyone asked. Moses said, 'This is the bread God has given you to eat!' They called it manna, which means 'What is it?' It tasted sweet, like honey wafers. God gave them some special rules: collect just enough for your family each day. Don't try to save it for tomorrow, or it will go bad and get wormy. But on Friday, collect twice as much, because Saturday is a day of rest. Some people didn't listen and tried to keep manna overnight. In the morning—yuck! It was full of worms and smelled terrible. But the manna collected on Friday stayed fresh for Saturday. Every single morning for forty years, God sent manna. He took care of His people every single day!