Imagine going to sleep one night not knowing where your next meal will be. Now, imagine you woke up the next morning and found food. The normal person would save as much of the food as possible so that they have some for the next day. Now, imagine doing this every day for forty years.
Nowadays, most people, b"H, have food to eat. The idea of going without food for a day would not even cross most peoples mind. To be willing to go to sleep every night hoping food just appears at your door would be insane. But in the time while the Jews were in the desert they did this every single day. They had such faith in Hashem that every night they went to sleep confident that there would be food for them the next morning.
If we look at the pasukim closely we can learn a lot about bitachon and hishtadlut from the parsha of man.
In pasuk 16:4 Hashem says to Moshe "Behold, I will send down to them bread from heaven. The nation will come out and collect the amount for each day on that day, so that I will know if they are following my Torah or not." Hashem is saying here how this the entire concept of man is a test. He could have just given the Jews all of their food one time at the beginning of their travels through the desert but then He would not be testing their emunah each and every day.
Then the next pasuk says that for shabbat they will have everything prepared from beforehand. This teaches us the concept that once shabbat comes all preparations are over and once shabbat comes we must forget about everything else.
The pasuk (16:16) says "this is the thing that Hashem commanded, collect from it each person according to the amount he eats... each person for his tent he should take." This shows us that Hashem gives each person the exact amount that that person needs and a person should never be jealous about what another person has, because if you needed more Hashem would give it to you.
(16:19) "And Moshe said to them "A man should not leave over until the morning." Leaving over meant that you thought there would not be any left for the next day. This idea is exactly against the emunah that they were expected to have.
Later, when the Jews collected a double portion on erev shabbat they were very confused. If we are supposed to have emunah that Hashem will provide then why do I have a double portion now? But didn't Hashem already tell Moshe earlier that this would happen? So why hadn't Moshe told them before this whole scenario happened that they should expect it? This was yet another way to show their emunah. Most times when good things happen to people they do not thank Hashem for it, it is only the bad times that people look to God. Here, we see that when the people got more then they were expecting the first thing they do is turn to Moshe to ask Hashem why this happened. If Moshe would have told them earlier they would have known it was from Hashem, this way they got to discover it on their own.
At the end of the parsha of man Moshe tells Aharon to save some man in a jar and keep it in the mishkan. What is the point of this jar? Later, in the time of Yirmihayu many people stopped learning so that they could work. Yirmihayu told them to go learn. Their response was that if they did they would have no food to eat. Yirmihayu walked into the Beit Hamikdash and brought out this jar. He said, just as Hashem could satisfy all of the Jews in the desert so too Hashem could feed all of you. This teaches us that even if we are not all on the level of the people of midbar we should all try to reach our highest potential and the rest will be provided by Hashem.
Have a great Shabbat Shira!
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