From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute podcast, Faith, Illuminating Scholarship.

In 2026, we are releasing a series called Old Testament Reflections. Each week, a scholar offers a short reflection on the Come Follow Me reading.

Today's piece, Perce the wild abundance of the wilderness.

Thoughts on Numbers, Chapter 11 through 14, 20 through 24, and 27 is written and read by

Robbie Taggart. The Hebrew name for the book of Numbers by Bah Midbar, literally means in the wilderness.

This seems a fitting title. The book contains tales of desolate places and desperate situations.

The wandering Israelites find themselves hungry for cucumbers and leeks and meat,

dying of thirst in the desert, surrounded by towering antagonists and fiery serpents, and in danger

of being cursed by a professional pagan soothsayer, death lurks around every turn. But abundance and

anguish walk hand in hand through this wilderness. Miracles blossom wherever these weary souls turn.

The wilderness is a place of great suffering and great love.

Sometimes the grace of the desert is merely sufficient. God rains down daily bread, enough to

sustain us when we put in the unremitting work of gathering. At some point, every disciple will

know the weariness of daily seeking, the feeling of hungering for a meager sufficiency of grace,

enough patience or love or strength or hope or peace to sustain us through one more moment of the

exhausting spiritual, physical, and relational wildernesses of our lives. So it makes sense when the

Israelites begin to murmur, who shall give us flesh to eat? Now our soul is dried away.

There's nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes. They ask God, in essence,

can't you offer anything better than this honey-flavored miracle bread from heaven? Where are the fish,

the melons, and the garlic we loved when we were slaves in Egypt, can't we catch a break

from the dailiness and ordinariness of seeking sustenance?

Even Moses gets so weary of the complaints of his people and the arduous relentlessness

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