Imagine this: you wake up one morning and you feel it: your mouth is dry and you’re thirsty. You think to yourself “Wait! Why do I feel this way?” And then it hits you: your nose if stuffed. Oh yes, the allergy monster has come for you and has taken your nose hostage. The chances of breathing through your nose ever again seem slim and the world feels strangely drier. You reminisce about the days when you could breathe through your nose.

 

Ok maybe that was a bit dramatic, but you get what I’m saying. We don’t really recognize how nice it is to breathe through our noses until we lose the ability to do so. If you happen to be able to breathe through your nose right now, give your nose a little hug in appreciation for it doing an underappreciated job, and thank God that you are able to breathe through your nose. If you can’t breathe through your nose, well, I’m sorry. Better days are to come. 

 

Now if you’re confused about how your nose and its ability to breathe relates to God or the Bible or really anything, hold on to your hats because here it comes.

 

When the Israelites were released from captivity in Egypt, they were supposed to go straight to the Promised Land. However, they didn’t put their trust in God’s ability to deliver the land to them, so they had to wander the desert for 40 years. While this sounds like a while, I sometimes lose sight of just how long it is. To really put it into perspective, think about this: if you were born just after the Israelites sinned, you went through all of childhood, all of your twenties, all of your thirties, and were almost forty while still wandering the desert. If you were born halfway through this wandering period, you spend all of your childhood wandering the desert. Think about how much life happens in this time! You learn to talk, to walk, to run, to climb trees, and to do chores, and that’s just before you’re eight. That is a lot of life to happen while you are wandering in a desert. Think about how much physical growing is done in that time. Imagine an infant compared to a five-year-old. Think about how much size difference there is between them, and how many sets of clothes they go through while they grow!

 

And yet, in Deuteronomy 8:4 it says: “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” Forty years! For forty years, the clothes that the Israelites had didn’t wear out and fall apart. This isn’t to say that they didn’t rip when a young boy fell down or that they didn’t get dirt stains on them, but they didn’t just fall to bits after so much use. For an adult who is done growing, that’s one thing. But for someone who was born at the start of the 40 year period, that is all of their childhood clothes, all of the clothes they wore while teens, all of the clothes in their twenties, and all of the clothes in their thirties that never wore out. The cloth that they were wrapped in as a child was able to be shared with other babies. The clothes that they ran around and played in while they were young were passed down to younger siblings or cousins once they outgrew them. The clothes never wore out!

 

This is kind of like being able to breathe through our noses. On a normal day, we don’t realize that our noses aren’t stuffy. The Israelites just didn’t realize that their clothes weren’t wearing out until God brought it up. Sometimes we lose sight of the little things that God is doing for us, like letting us breathe through our noses.

 

Not only were there little miracles occurring in the desert, like clothes not wearing out and feet not swelling, but there was also a very big, very obvious miracle occurring: food was falling from the sky every morning. Think Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Food literally just fell from the sky and collected on the ground for them to eat. And while they couldn’t place special orders for food as the people in the movie could, they didn’t have to search for food while they were wandering in the desert. I don’t imagine that there was very much food out there either, so the food falling from the sky was probably very much needed. 

 

What blessings have you experienced recently? Maybe food hasn’t fallen from the sky for you, but what about the smaller, less noticed blessings? Is your nose stuffy? Has your car broken down lately? Have you lost your chapstick recently? 

 

What about this: have you battled a dinosaur recently? If you believe that God is all-powerful, you believe that he has the power to raise a dinosaur from the dead and let it roam in the streets. After all, God has had his fair share of people raising from the dead, so a dinosaur would probably be quite easy for him. 

 

The point is, there are many little blessings all around us. And while none of them may be as amazing as manna falling from the sky each morning, they might be just as subtle as our clothes not wearing out. What are some of the ways that God has been providing for you that you haven’t noticed? Have you stubbed your toe recently? Maybe God has been helping your feet take steps to not stub your toe. Has your dog been extra cuddly? Maybe God is sending extra joy to your life. Is your nose stuffy?