Idealism about daily devotions usually has some good in it, but it can be a recipe for frustration and ungodly guilt over time. I don’t want to disparage good intentions — may God fulfill your “every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). And as someone who’s walked the path for a few years, I’ve found help in this simple word for faithful realism in daily Bible meditation: gather a day’s portion.

In nearly twenty years of regular Bible reading, one of the most frequent mistakes I’ve made is trying to do too much.

Over the years, I have sat down many times to brainstorm and outline my ideal “time in the word.” I would drum up fresh resolve and dive in again to the newly demanding scheme: read broadly in multiple places, study deeply in one, identify applications, journal, memorize, pray through lists. But if I had ever paused to make a realistic assessment on how long the whole process would have taken, I may have realized how undoable it was (two and a half hours would have been tight). That kind of time may be hard to come by for a monk.

Idealism about daily devotions usually has some good in it, but it can be a recipe for frustration and ungodly guilt over time. I don’t want to disparage good intentions — may God fulfill your “every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). And as someone who’s walked the path for a few years, I’ve found help in this simple word for faithful realism in daily Bible meditation: gather a day’s portion.

As Much as You Can Eat

The phrase comes from Exodus 16. God’s people have been freshly freed from slavery in Egypt and passed through the Red Sea (Exodus 14). Moses and the people erupt in a song of praise (Exodus 15:1–21). And then, in barely three days, the people already are grumbling (Exodus 15:22–24). God responds with grace, “heals” the bitter water, and then brings them to a place of plenty, an oasis with “twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees” (Exodus 15:25–27). Soon they set out from the oasis, and then they are grumbling again (Exodus 16:2), now to the point of delusion (Exodus 16:3).

Their collective immaturity has come out immediately, but again God responds with grace: “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day” (Exodus 16:4). This bread from heaven they call “manna,” and Moses gives the further instruction, “Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat” (Exodus 16:16).

Of course, the story is not first and foremost about Christian Bible reading today. But God does give us a glimpse into who he is, and what it means to have him as our God, and for us to be his people. He is the kind of God who provides for our needs on an everyday basis. He is the God who is with his people every step of the way, to give them, by his own hand, daily provision in the wilderness to get them safely to his Promised Land. His Son teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), and warns us not to adopt the build-bigger-barns mind-set of the rich fool, who put his hope for the future in his own store rather than in the Father’s daily, active care.

God wants our sitting down with his Book each day to be more like coming to dinner than going to the grocery store. Come to eat and drink here and now, for today, not mainly to store up for someday in the future. God doesn’t mean for us to focus on developing our own stash and personal pantry, but to feed straight from his warehouse.

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