Today is our Bread of the Presence anniversary. It’s pretty unlikely that anyone reading this has ever heard of such a remembrance, and I’m not even sure I can communicate effectively the profound significance this day holds for us. Even though it happened 2 years ago, this is the first time we’re celebrating it because we just realized what happened a few months ago.
Hopefully if you’re reading this you’ve already read my testimony (pages 1-14). You’ll know already by my journal entries during this time 2 years ago that I was desperately struggling with believing that God had abandoned, betrayed and forsaken us, because He was not providing for us in the way that I had expected Him to. We were starving in many ways during this time. You’ll also remember that I was doing Beth Moore’s Bible study on the tabernacle during our time in Italy. I usually dated each lesson as I did it, and some days I did 2 lessons because I had nothing better to do than study God’s Word more.
Earlier this year I watched one of Beth Moore’s lessons on Life Today called “The Bread of The Presence”, where she tied together the scriptures in John 6 where Jesus calls Himself the Bread of Life, Exodus 16 where God gave the Israelites manna to eat in the desert, and Leviticus 24 where God gives instructions for the bread of the Presence on the table in the tabernacle. I found these connections profoundly fascinating. I began to make my own connection at that time between these scriptures and the unleavened bread that we sometimes lived on in Italy.
Some time later I was doing this same tabernacle study again. When I reached the lesson on The Bread of the Presence, I noticed that the date I originally did it was 11/18/09. I also noticed that I did 2 lessons that same day, which told me I was having a particularly hard time coping that day. November 18 sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I went to my prayer journal to see if I had written anything that day. I nearly fell over when I read the entry for that day:
“Today Emily had the clever idea to make unleavened bread, which only takes flour, oil and salt. (She had learned to make this in Bible class a couple of years before).”
I am absolutely convinced that this was God’s way of showing us that His Presence was indeed with us during that time, only we couldn’t see it until 1 1/2 years later. As I pointed out in my original testimony, His Hand covered our faces at the time, so we could see His Glory only after He passed by.
HE…IS…SO…BRILLIANT
HE…IS…SO…AMAZING!!!!
