The Miracle of Feeding -- AKA The Jesus Catering Service

The story of the feeding of the 5,000 in the Bible is one of many miracles that is used to show Jesus’ authority and power.  When Jesus showed up to find 5,000 men and likely another 10,000 or more women and children gathered, the disciples were concerned that there would be trouble feeding them.  I guess I wouldn’t have thought much about it and not taken it on as my responsibility.  I’d figure it was their tough luck.  Many in the crowd were pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem, perhaps they had packed food for the trip?  Still, it was obviously a concern that was apparent to the disciples, so there must have been an indication that there was no food to speak of.  Jesus then takes a basket with a few small loaves of bread and a couple of fish and they pass that out (mind you, this food was possessed by a child who managed to remember to pack a lunch!  I’ve raised children, and I tell you that in itself sounds like a miracle!) 

Miraculously, everyone is fed and a dozen full baskets of scraps are gathered afterward.  So, where did the other 11 empty baskets come from?  Were they some of what was originally filled with food that others had brought along?  Skeptics would say that the real miracle was that Jesus somehow got everyone to share with those who had nothing.  Perhaps.  Frankly, that’s a pretty big miracle and lesson in itself, but my belief is that something else very different transpired that day.  

Jesus comments the next day, when they are all back waiting for him, that they only came again because He fed them food.  That implies to me that he did in fact do something unexplainable and miraculous to create food where there was none.  (We witness this miracle twice in the New Testament, so I guess when you are hosting a party in 33 A.D. you needed to supply the eats.  My church supplies food for all the evening study groups, so I guess the tradition lives on…LOL   I suspect in Jesus case, he was trying to make a point.)

To me the most miraculous feeding though was the fact that He gave them what He called the “bread of life,” something which satisfies and even cures the hunger for truth, love and meaning in us, if we accept Jesus as the pathway to eternity. Jesus said He was the way, sent from heaven by God.  The world tells us there are many ways, or else it tells us there is no God.

What do you think?  What do you hope?