Eucharistic meditation

Numbers 11:23: Yahweh said to Moses, Is Yahweh’s hand short? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not.

Isaiah 50 alludes several times to the exodus. It also alludes several times to episodes during Israel’s wilderness period. “Is my hand too short?” Yahweh asks Moses in the desert. And through Isaiah He poses the same question to Judah.

In Numbers, the context has to do with food. Out in the wilderness, the Israelites begin to miss the square meals of Egyptian slavery, the fish and melons and leeks. Even Moses wonders where there’s enough food for 600,000 men.

So Yahweh asks, Has my arm grown too short? Yahweh will show His power in giving bread to His people, bread even in the wilderness. He gives His word, and He provides food to confirm that His Word is trustworthy.

Is God’s hand too short to reach you in your confusion, the disarray of your life, the wilderness where you wander? Not if you’re at this table. This is bread in the wilderness for all of us, confirmation that His arm is always long enough to reach us.