Fishes & Loaves

It seems every Sunday for weeks on end, my kids leave Sunday School with some sort of Fishes and Loaves craft. It is a simple story that is oft told. Indeed, the story of how Jesus fed 5,000 with a little boy's lunch of two fishes and five loaves is so well known that most of us don't truly appreciate the miracle of it or what it is meant to tell us for our lives today.

This was powerfully brought home to me recently reading a selection from the Women of Faith Amazing Freedom devotional about this story. In it Sheila Walsh points out: "He gave what he had to Jesus, and in return he got to see what God can do when heaven and earth hold hands. This miracle on a hillside is repeated over and over every day from Pittsburgh to Paris, from New York to New Zealand. It is the mystery and miracle that everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is invited to participate in -- bring all you have to the table, and see what God will do!"

She goes on to say "Too often we miss the point as daughters of the King. We look at what we have to offer, and it is clear to us that it's not enough so we hold back. Yet the fact that we don't have enough is the whole point. We are given the outrageous invitation to partner with the King of kings as lavishes his love and grace on this earth....Whatever you have today is enough. It might not look like it to you, but put into Jesus's hands, it is more than enough."

That really hit home for me as I SO often think I just don't have what it takes so why bother trying? This really made me see that all that is required of me is to bring what I do have and give it to Jesus.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. --2 Corinthians 12:9

I never got the above verse before. I didn't understand how God could use my weaknesess, without actually fixing them first. So I kept bringing them to him and expecting them to be fixed, snatching them back when He didn't fix them. Unknowingly, preventing him from using them for His miracles. Now, I'm finally beginning to get that God truly does just want me to bring me and put myself in His hands and see what He can do with what He has been given, even when it is clearly not enough in my hands.

There is freedom.