Jesus is the only person who has ever hosted a meal for thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish. In the last few days I have stated to learn that this is at the very heart of God. He is the God of lesser things. He is the God who made hummingbirds, the God who made different types of leaves that reflect the sun differently then the leaves of the tree right next to it. A sunrise happens because of light waves getting absorbed by tiny particles in the atmosphere (maybe bad science, but that's the principle as I was taught it). The huge and majestic mountains are formations of smaller rocks, the human body is full of cells, proteins, DNA, chromosomes and other tiny things. If nature points to God then nature is telling me that God is so big he is able to be small, God is so good that the tiny details of his world did not escape him. He made the world a place of small things.
If that is the small things in nature what about Jesus, who was by very nature God? At the point in his ministry that he fed probably 5-10 000 000 people he was, gathering quite a following and was getting very well known. The crowd in the story followed him to remote places and had been with him for a few days. He could have sent them away, they were probably expecting him to send them away. But to him there was not a large crowd that needed to be taken care of like there was to the disciples, to Jesus this huge crowd were all people with names that he knew and hearts that he saw. He loved and took compassion on them. The disciples were obviously concerned about the crowd but were not expecting the reaction that Jesus gave them... "You give them something to eat."
"Umm... I'd love to Jesus, but we only have enough food for US... five loaves, some fish, that's actually barely enough for us... I mean we could go to the market, but we may need to take up offering or something..." I imagine Jesus laughed. The disciples did not understand, they were with him his whole ministry and it took them longer then that to really get it (God is gracious). "Put them in groups of fifty" then he blessed the bread and fish and fed everyone. How beautiful.
Jesus wasn't intimidated by the size of the crowd, nor was the point of the miracle because of the size of the crowd. Jesus loved every person in that crowd just like he loves every person on earth today. He wants them all to have bread of life, to know him - he wants to take care of them, all of them, physical and otherwise. The disciples wanted this too, at least they wanted everyone to eat, but all they had was five loaves and two fish... sound like you? Sounds like me most of the time. I begin to realize that if I look at my "calling" or my "destiny" or "what I can do for God" that's my dreams I get rather intimidated. He calls us to a lot. But he's not the God that expects his twelve poor, tired disciples to go buy the whole crowd food so all of those people can see how loving he is. He is a God that takes what we have and are willing to give him and will multiply it in such a way that we can't possibly dream of. Maybe life is not about a destiny that's living somewhere out there that we have to clutch at with bloody fingers of our own human effort. Maybe a life of discipleship is giving God what we HAVE, our time, our money, our talents and abilities, even our day if we're exhausted and stressed and have a million things to do. Give God the little that you do have, what you think he could never possibly use to impact ANYONE, and see what the God of lesser things can do with it.
