Life Spark: God may want you to chew a little longer on what He’s up to. (John 6:1-15)
Jesus went with His disciples to the far side of the Sea of Galilee. As they say high on a hill together they saw a tidal wave of people moving toward them, including many sick people, desiring to be healed. Jesus saw the people as fifteen thousand possibilities. Pragmatic Philip, one of the top twelve, saw fifteen thousand weary, hungry problems.
To stretch Philip’s faith and to feed His followers, Jesus miraculously multiplied a single, small meal to feed a multitude.
“When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, ‘Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.’” (John 6:12, NIV)
I love left-over pizza. It’s even better a day or two later. But left-over miracle? Did The Lord miscalculate? Was there too much miracle? What happened to the surplus? At Christ’s command, the twelve of them gathered twelve baskets of left-over barley loaves. They didn’t end up with any left-over fish. That would have spoiled. I believe God knew what part of the miracle would be good to chew on for the next few days.
Maybe God wanted them to meditate on what happened so they wouldn’t misread the miracle, like most of the crowd did. The multitude read correctly of the message: “God can bring about miraculous change … ”
“Jesus saw that in their enthusiasm, they were about to grab him and make him king, so he slipped off and went back up the mountain to be by himself.” (John 6:15, MSG)
They missed the most important part of the message. Their read was, “God can bring about miraculous change in my situation.” The real message was, “God can bring about miraculous change in my spirit and soul, and then in my situation.”
This is what that says to me. What God is teaching me about me is even more important than what God is saving me from or helping me with. Why didn’t Jesus just pray for food and ‘Presto!’ Why did He start with what little they had? Is it because the most important part of a miracle deals with what God wants to do within us as opposed to what God wants to do around us?
Life-challenge: Break a little piece of bread off of a slice and keep it in your pocket for 24 hours to remind you that God wants to change the world by changing you.