Five loaves and two fish

You just discover that you have five thousand people turn up for lunch and all you have to offer them is five loaves and two fish.

Compared to the challenge the reality is that you have nothing to offer. Five loaves and two fish is not going to go very far.

It looks like everyone is going to have to go home hungry.

Sometimes in life we face big challenges with few resources. It is tempting to look at the problem and write it off as mission impossible without even thinking about it.

David had faced lions before but he had never faced combat with an enemy like Goliath, and Goliath could see the funny side of it and yet....

Gideon had just three hundred men and they were up against the multitudes of the Midianites, and yet....

Daniel was in a foreign land, with foreign God and the lions were feeling hungry and yet....

Miracles are possible.

Jesus manages after a hard day at work - healing and preaching, to feed the five thousand with just five loaves and a couple of fish.

David defeats Goliath.

Gideon beats the Midianites.

Daniel doesn't get eaten by the Lions.

We may not have much to offer. We may face impossible odds, except if God is on our side, the odds don't actually matter.

Five loaves and two fish is enough to feed the five thousand if that is what God intends.

The question is not what do we have, but to stand in the place of faith and hope and love, and listen as Jesus asks you the question what do you have and be prepared to be part of a miracle.

I can't help but notice that at the end their were twelve baskets full of broken pieces. At the end there were not twelve baskets of loaves and fish but of broken pieces.

There is something about miracles that changes everything and that mends that which was broken and breaks that which was not. There is change and there are often broken pieces left over.

Tomorrow we will face challenges that we may feel that we do not have the resources to face, however if God can use five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand then he can use us and whatever resources we have to do his will.