So I have slacked a little since the last time I posted. I have however saved up a few ideas for writing that I want to share over the next couple of days.
There are some days where I just use the verse of the day on YouVersion as my daily reading (as my kids would say “don’t judge me”), but I tend to read the entire chapter not just the one verse. Well the other day one of the verses in the full chapter stuck out to me and it was this:
“Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?””
John 6:8-9 NLT
So if you for some reason don’t know the whole story, Jesus was on the side of the mountain and there were 5,000 men plus wives and children (I’m sure they counted) that had come to hear Jesus talk and to see Him perform miracles. Jesus just wants to feed them before they leave. There’s obviously not enough food just laying around for everyone to eat, well at least that’s what the disciples think. Jesus takes two fish and five loaves of bread from a small boy and feeds them ALL. It’s a miraculous story and of course I know there are skeptics out there that have ways that this “could have happened”.. But I’m not here to start a discussion on that. Here’s what I want to focus on. The boy.
Here is a young boy, and you can figure since they say “boy” that he has to be young since in the Jewish culture 13 was considered to be a man.. He comes with just a small amount of food. It doesn’t say where he got the food, but he had it. He might have been sent by his parents with it or he might have grabbed it while hearing the conversation, but either way it doesn’t matter. He walked up to Jesus and the disciples and handed it over knowing what would happen next. I believe he knew what would happen because he was looking at his Heavenly Father with the same eyes that we would look at our dads when we were little. He knew his Dad could conquer the world. Literally. As we read on we find out that Jesus definitely does exactly what this boy expects. He feeds everyone and there are enough scraps left over to fill 12 baskets. Coincidence that there’s 12 disciples, I don’t think so Tim (sorry, old Tool Time joke).
When we have a need that needs met, whether it be a financial need, a physical (such as food) need, an emotional need, or most importantly a spiritual need, we need to look to Jesus. He will hear our prayers and you can know that He will come through every time. Even if we can’t speak what we need, He’ll figure it out, but I’ll talk more about that in the next post!
For now just seek Him first and all the rest will fall into place. That’s my version of Matthew 6:33.
Till next time.