Feeding Thousands

some brief thoughts from the miracle accounts of Christ feeding the five and four thousand (Matt. 14 and 15)...

• “You give them something to eat” (14:16). If people are coming to you to be helped spiritually but you don't feel like you have enough to help them, cry out to God. Don't send them away to the world. Ask God for bread to give them (Matt. 7:9, Luke 11:5).

• Jesus has the disciples distribute the bread (15:36). The invisible God has always used prophets and ambassadors to accomplish his work. Our role is to bring people to Jesus, and to give Jesus' bread to others.

• Jesus is full of compassion (15:32). If you draw away from the world to be with him, he won't send you away empty and fainting. He will abundantly provide, so much so to the point of surplus. You will “eat and be satisfied.” He is the bread of life.

• Jesus doesn't create bread out of thin air, nor from stones. God will use and multiply the little that we have. He takes our humble and weak efforts and energizes them with divine life and surrounds them with either supernatural or providentially favorable circumstances to make them effectual. So, for example, if you despair of the usefulness of trying to invite your neighbor to a bible study, just remember that God doesn't.