He didn't just feed 5000

Today we read from Matthew 14:13-36 in the One Year Bible. We read the story of Jesus feeding a huge crowd of people with just a little bread and fish. We refer to it as the "feeding of the 5000", but that's wildly inaccurate. He didn't just feed 5000 people. He fed 5000 MEN... along with women and children. We don't know how many women and children there were, but it's probably safe to say that the number He fed was over 10,000. When you read the stories of His interactions with people, there are always many women following Him, sometimes more than men.

This is the most difficult miracle for me to visualize. I can imagine Him walking on water, rising from the dead, healing people, turning water to wine. But it's hard for me to imagine exactly HOW He took a little bit of bread and fish and then turned it into enough food to feed 10,000 people.

However, C.S. Lewis points out something pretty cool about Jesus's miracles. Almost all of them are examples of things that God does all of the time, but Jesus does it very quickly while God normally takes a long time to do it. God, for example, takes water and puts it into grapes... which then ferment, and turn into wine. He does this every year, to the delight of vintners and wine lovers all over the world.

Jesus takes a little bit of food and turns it into ALOT of food. God does this all the time, or we would have run out of fish and bread thousands of years ago. Even His walking on the water can be seen as a snapshot of the spirit of God "hovering over the waters" in Genesis.

And the cool thing for us to realize today is that God is still in the business of taking a little bit of a resource and turning it into all that you need to be satisfied. You literally don't have to worry about what you'll eat, what you'll drink, or what you'll wear. He will take care of that. He provides for His children. You can trust Him to meet your needs, even when the income looks slim. And He wants you to not only be satisfied yourself, but to take some of what He gives you, and help those in need. "You feed them!" is not just a command for His disciples in His day, but for all of us followers of Jesus, as we look out and see those who are hungry for His bread... both spiritual and physical.

God, thanks for always providing what we need. Help us remember to pass the bread along to others.