Pray:
God, I want to partner with You to bring the bread of life to a world that is dying for lack of it. Prepare me and send me.
Read:
Matthew 15:29-39
Reflect:
What moves Jesus to action (32)?
I have just returned from Spring Harvest, a major Christian holiday event in the United Kingdom, where I live. It is six wonderful days of being with several thousand other Christians, worshiping in a big tent, learning, and having fun together. It is like being on the hill with Jesus.
Jesus is now in a Gentile area (21,29; cf. Mark 7:31). Otherwise the conditions are pretty much the same as at the previous al fresco meal in chapter 14. This time, however, it is Jesus, filled with compassion, who approaches the disciples with concern that the people are going hungry (32).
Somehow the disciples still seem not to have learned that they can trust Jesus to provide (33), in spite of what they have seen with their own eyes. But working alongside him, everything is possible. And it is for us, too.
What an amazing number of lives Jesus touched over those three days! The people had put aside their commitments for a while and given their time to God. They were blessed with healing and filled with much more than food.
Apply:
Ask God to expand your expectation of what he can do, as he did for the disciples.
Pray:
Jesus, I long to see the world satisfied as You meet needs both spiritual and physical. You can do the impossible.
