VERSES: And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick. When it was evening, His disciples came to Him saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that may go into the villages and buy themselves food.” But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” He said, “Bring them here to Me.” Then he commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Mt. 14:14-21, New King James Version)
Many times in life, we are faced with tasks and responsibilities in the Lord for which may not have the necessary resources. Here in verse 16, Jesus tells his disciples to give ‘them’ something to eat. We all know that the ‘them’ in question is a group of 5000 men, besides women and children. So the logical question is: How on earth did Jesus expect His 12 disciples to come up with enough food to feed a crowd that huge?
Well the truth is, that’s not what He expected….
The disciples would have been understandably perplexed. But even then, instead of arguing like most of us would do: “Lord, how do you think we’re going to do that?” or “You can’t expect us to come up with that much food in such short notice!” They said, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” Their surrender of the little they had led to probably the biggest (unprepared!) feast in history…
From this we can understand what God really expects of us. We do not have infinite time, skill, talent or even energy. But are we ready to give up the limited resources we have when Jesus says, “Bring them here to Me..”?
THOUGHT: Is serving God about how much we’ve got from God? Or is it more about how much we are willing to give to God?
1 comment:
An amazing thought. God want us give and bring to Him but with our selfishness and self-centred behaviour, we want to build store houses like the foolish rich man Jesus talks about in Luke 12. We must really examine our lives to check how we serve God!
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