Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled String Too Short to Use was written by Tim Gustafson.

Aunt Margaret's frugality was legendary.

After she passed away, her nieces began the nostalgically

bittersweet task of sorting her belongings. In a drawer, neatly arrayed inside a small plastic bag,

they discovered an assortment of small pieces of string. The label read,

String, too short to use. What would motivate someone to keep and

categorize something they knew to be of no use? Perhaps this person once knew extreme deprivation.

When the Israelites fled slavery in Egypt, they left behind a life of hardship, but they soon

forgot God's miraculous hand in their Exodus and started complaining about the lack of food.

God wanted them to trust him.

He provided manna for their desert diet telling Moses in Exodus 16, the people are to go

out each day and gather enough for that day.

God also instructed them to gather twice as much on the sixth day, because on the Sabbath,

no manna would fall. Some of the Israelites listened. Some didn't, with predictable results.

In times of plenty and times of desperation, it's tempting to try to cling to hoard in a desperate attempt at control.

There's no need to take everything into our own frantic hands, no need to save scraps of string, or to hoard anything at all.

Our faith is in God, who has promised, never will I leave you.

Never will I forsake you.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Exodus chapter 16 verses 21 through 30.

Each morning, everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away.

On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much, two omers for each person, and the leaders of the

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