Wednesday, February 13, 2019
“Jesus took the five loaves and
two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves
into pieces, he kept giving the bread and fish to the disciples so they could
distribute it to the people.” (Luke 9:16, New Living Translation)
Recently, I
finished an “adult” version of a Lego set which I had received for Christmas. Well, the box claimed it was for
ages 12 and up, so I certainly qualify. It was 2049 pieces altogether, some pieces
so small that they were about a quarter of the size of the nail of my pinky
finger. The instruction booklet alone was 278 pages, painstakingly taking me
through each bit of construction, piece by piece, step by step. There were seven
stages, each stage coming in 2 or 3 plastic bags, each bag clearly marked as
for what stage it was for. I did a stage a day, taking about 2 to 3 hours per
each.
The end result was
an old fishing store named Anton’s Bait
Shop. There was some amazing detail to the store, both inside and out. There
were four Lego characters. Working from the
base up I had to put together every inch
of the shop. There were little tiny lobsters for the crates and sitting on
little plastic pieces for ice. There were crabs and seagulls, a cat, fishing
poles, life preservers, tools, money even, and on and on. A whole wall comes open or the roof comes off
to reveal the insides of the store. The design is quite ingenious. It was sometimes
challenging for my arthritic hands to handle some of the smaller pieces or
manage to fit them in to some very tight places. I used tweezers when I could.
When I first
looked at all the pieces, the size of the instruction manual or the smallness
of what I was dealing with, it felt a little overwhelming and daunting. But I
got it done. There were no missing pieces. In fact, the kit gave me extras of many
of the smallest pierces (at least, I hope they were extra!)
I am never, ever
taking it apart! It will be passed on to my children and my grandchildren to
fight over!
I can hardly blame
the disciples’ skepticism and reluctance when Jesus challenged them to feed the
crowd of over 5000 people to whom Jesus had just finished speaking and healing.
That is a lot of pieces of humanity who were tired and hungry. The disciples had urged Jesus to send them all
away to fend for themselves, “for we are
in a deserted place.” Right away, our ears should perk up - a wilderness is
almost always a sign that God is going to do something special.
We always seem to
make excuses when faced with a daunting and challenging project. “Let the
pastor do it.” “Let the government do it.” “Find someone else to take care of
it.” “It’s not my job.” “I don’t know how.” “It’s too hard.” “I’m busy!” “We don’t
have the resources or the money to do it.” The disciples were no different when
Jesus told them to feed everybody: “But
we have only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Or are you
expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?” (Luke 9:13,
NLT)
Their cold calculations
didn’t add up to the challenge they faced.
But Jesus did not give up and abandon the project of providing a meal.
He poured himself into the venture. Were 5000 people a number too big? He
couldn’t and wouldn’t ignore them. “He
took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer,
blessed, broke, and gave the bread and fish to the disciples to hand out to the
crowd.” (Luke 9:16, The Message Bible)
The pieces of bread
and fish came together to make a full meal, , enough to feed every single
person on that hill, a foreshadowing of the abundant life that will be part of
the New Reality (i.e. the Kingdom) that is yet to come. “Give us our daily
bread.” Feed me ‘til I want no more. And make sure my neighbour gets fed too,
as much or more than I am fed. There are
enough pieces for everyone.
In fact, there is more,
extra, left-overs, additional bits and pieces that will feed us not only today
but tomorrow as well.
Imagine that!
Dale
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