Multiply My Fish and Loaves!

                   "Multiply my fish and loaves!"

                   This has been the cry of my heart since I found out God does this multiplication stuff; not just with food but in many areas of my life.  This has been the cry of my heart since I entered motherhood.  With every person added to our family there seems to be less and less of me.   And maybe you have offered up a similar cry perhaps as a college student or a business executive, teacher or church leader?  Or maybe a stretching season or a stretching relationship causes you to feel like you are just not enough.  Here's the Good News . . . you aren't.  And the good news is you never were.

                    In those seasons, we feel so stretched beyond what we can possibly do well.
It seems our best effort isn't good enough, and we literally feel like we may snap in two unless He comes to our aid.

                    And I have to wonder, was this a set up? A way for the Divine to display His distance??  No, I think its supposed to be a way for the Divine to display His deliverance.

                    And He might just use us to do it; to be the ones who toss our tiny efforts up to the Father and say "Multiply this!", even from our position of apparent weakness.  The temptation is to drop the ball and run and hide.  We may feel inadequate.  We want to assign the job to someone else.

                     "This has got to be someone else's job!"  And sometimes, on a rare occasion we are right.  But many times we are wrong.  God is looking right into our eyes, pointing straight at us.

                    Remember, the disciples tried to send the crowd elsewhere?  I will admit, on a bad day, I have had this thought a few times with my kids.  But what does Jesus say to his disciples . . . "You give them something to eat."

Mark6:30-44 says:
                35 By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. 36 Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”

37 But he answered, “You give them something to eat.”

They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages[a]! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”

38 “How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.”

When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”

39 Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass.40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 They all ate and were satisfied, 43 and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. 44 The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.

             

               A Prayer for Today:  Lord, be strong in our very apparent weakness.  Multiply our weak efforts.  Do the impossible through us.  Help us not to gaze too long on our inadequacies.  Do for those around us what we can't do in and of ourselves. Amen.