{"id":25647,"date":"2026-02-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messyjesusbusiness.com\/?p=25058"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:19:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:19:05","slug":"manna-in-this-desert-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2026\/02\/12\/manna-in-this-desert-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Manna in this Desert Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I sit at my desk, gazing out the sliding glass doors as snow falls in large, deliberate flakes \u2014 like manna falling from heaven, I think. In a moment that feels like a meandering journey through an unforgiving desert, the image of nourishment is welcome, even if it\u2019s only enough for today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by the author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Open and face-down on my desk is a book from the library \u2013 Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the Criminal Alien<\/em><\/a>. In it, Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez helps me make sense of the disillusion I\u2019m feeling at the incredible power that narratives of criminality<\/em> have in justifying state-sanctioned violence against people in our communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I try to find hope in essential, immediate, life-saving actions like body cameras and judicial warrants, I can\u2019t help but worry that many will mistake these concessions for justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the manna falling outside my window reminds me that this struggle is nothing new. Since the people of Israel were brought out of slavery in Egypt, oppressed peoples have been demanding nothing less than full liberation, and have been sustained by God\u2019s grace in the journey to get there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Unseen Histories<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>

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In the US, decades of Black mothers and Chinese workers and Indigenous children have known the humiliation of being forced out of their homes, the agony of loved ones held behind bars in a never-ending labyrinth of excuses and delays and falsehoods and court dates and technicalities and abuse and yearning. Those whose lives are marked by addiction, mental illness, or poverty have felt the weight of the criminal label \u2014 caught in a system that claims to build justice but instead creates classes of exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detractors will try to convince us that striving for full liberation isn\u2019t grounded in reality. That by preaching radical love for all people, we are naive. We don\u2019t understand evil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet hope across generations has not been diminished \u2013 not because the ancestors who fought for justice were naive, but because they were rooted in a firm belief in inviolable human dignity that is neither given nor taken by human powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like them, we must hold tight to reminders that this is a long game, trusting the end toward which God is drawing us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moments like this can serve as prompts to deepen our own well. Lately I\u2019ve been searching for the right voices to shape my own resilience, like the joy-filled determination captured in Resistance Revival Chorus\u2019 rendition of \u201cThis Joy\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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