We’ve been gone from South Carolina only for a year, but our boys have already begun to forget. A couple of weeks ago, we took a trip to our old town. We drove through our neighborhood and saw the steep hill where they rode their bikes, screaming all the way down. We saw the spot where we always stopped on our springtime walks to snag honeysuckle. The boys, wide-eyed, kept saying, “Oh, I remember! I remember that!”

I believe remembering is one of the most important things we do as humans. In order to remember who we are, we need to remember where we’ve come from and what we’ve experienced up to now.

For Israel, their national identity was replete with stories of how their God had delivered and rescued and provided (and, yes, judged). The Exodus narrative tells how God pried Pharaoh’s hand free from His people and walked them out of Egypt. God opened up the sea, led His people with a fiery pillar (Exodus 14) and turned bitter water sweet (Exodus 15). And, perhaps most astonishingly, “rain[ed] down food from heaven” (16:4). They called it manna.

Despite God’s miraculous intervention, the people often doubted whether God would provide what they needed. When the people were hungry, they complained. And so God graciously sent them food—food that would fall from the sky. Every day, they had all they needed (v.12).

God insisted, however, that they save some manna as part of their holy items. He was concerned that future generations would forget what had been provided. When their grandchildren would ask about what the strange wafers were in the jar, they could say with gratitude and hope, “Ah, I remember.”