You Feed Them

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food." Jesus replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." "We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish," they answered. "Bring them here to me," he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. Matthew 14:15-21

What would I have said or thought if Jesus had told me to feed an enormous crowd using a practically non-existent food supply (relative to the size of the crowd)? What would you have done?

I probably would've stared at Jesus with an open mouth, clueless, speechless, incredulous. Me feed them, Lord?! What can You mean?

But it struck me in reading again the story of Joseph in Genesis that God uses the most inconceivable and amazing methods to accomplish His purposes. And when BB read account of Jesus to us at supper one night recently, His command to the disciples You feed them reverberated in my head over and over, as though He were saying it to me.

The thoughts in the mind of God are so far outside and above my understanding that such statements strike me as crazy - but the next time things seem impossible or hopeless or dark, O God, give me Your sight, ears to hear the Idea in Your Mind - let me not be so shocked when You want to work in startling ways.

Think of Peter, in prison for refusing to stop preaching in the name of Jesus (see Acts 12:1-18). Peter's Christian friends were praying earnestly for him, for all were sure that the end result of the imprisonment would be execution. No one could see how God would deliver Peter from prison and death, but they were praying all the same. Who'd have ever thought God would send an angel to poke Peter in the side, then walk him right past the guards out of the prison? What a strange and wonderful means of deliverance! So strange that Peter himself thought it was a dream or vision until he was out of the prison and the angel had left him!

God's work and His deliverance are not limited to my common sense, experience, or to human ability. I'm hoping, praying, that I won't be so taken aback the next time I see "insurmountable odds," or the next time I sense Him saying You feed them. By faith, I will trust Him to accomplish His purposes and His glory, by whatever amazing way He chooses.

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Photo: bright spot on my kitchen windowsill...full of "art supplies" for the girls' impromptu painting projects...when all the kitchen is a disaster (OFTEN!!), it's nice to have some tidy color there in front of me at the sink!