Dear Rose Park,
35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” 37 But Jesus answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”
The feeding of the five thousand is one of the most famous stories in all of scripture. Imagine the scene: the disciples are tired, and they’ve been traveling all day and meeting tons of people. Finally, when they think they are able to get away and rest for awhile, the crowds follow them and won’t leave them alone. Exasperated, they ask Jesus to send them away. Jesus with a loving smile on His face tells them to feed the crowds. This is where the story gets really interesting. The disciples start to complain. They essentially say, “We don’t have enough money to buy them food. Where are we going to find that kind of money? That’s a yearly salary Jesus! We can’t do this. We don’t have enough food or money to feed five thousand hungry people.” After finding out what they do have (only five loaves and two fish) Jesus essentially says, “I can work with that.”
In other words, give Jesus what you got and He’ll take care of the rest. How many times have you looked at a seemingly insurmountable task and thought I can’t do this…How am I going to do this?…I don’t have enough money or time or energy or resources…I’m not smart enough…or I’m not good enough? Jesus doesn’t need us (nor does He expect us) to have it all figure out, He simply asks that we give Him everything we do have. Or how many times has a church looked at a new vision or a ministry (like Rose Park is currently with our youth and family ministries) and said We can’t do this…We don’t have enough money…We don’t have enough people…We don’t have the time. Again, Jesus didn’t expect the disciples to have five thousand loaves of bread, or five thousand fish already prepped in baskets. He simply asked that they give Him what did they have, so He could take care of the rest.
I wonder, if the most faithful step is simply giving what we have to Jesus. We don’t have to have it all figured out. We don’t have to have every ‘i’ dotted or ‘t’ crossed, we simply need to give what we have to Christ and trust He’ll receive our offering with grace and love, He’ll embrace us as His children and then say, “I can work with that.”
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Mark
Photo by ZACHARY STAINES on Unsplash