A Feast for Five Thousand
Have you ever been skating or swimming and having so much fun that you did not even want to stop to eat? Sometimes things seem so important to us that we put them before our physical needs. We read about a group of people who were so interested in what Jesus had to say and do that they would not stop to eat because they did not want to miss anything. This situation gave Jesus an opportunity to perform a miracle. This miracle, known as “the Feeding of the 5,000,” is one of the few miracles recorded by all four of the gospel writers.
Jesus had become an extremely popular and well-known man because of His miracles and His profound teachings. He had a very large crowd that followed Him. We read about this miracle in John 6. The Bible tells us that there were 5,000 men. (That number does not even include the women and children!) When the time came to eat, the apostles came to Jesus to decide what should be done about the hungry crowd. It would have been very expensive to feed so many people. They knew that they did not have enough money. One of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, found a young man who had five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus took the loaves and thanked God for the food and then He began to pass the loaves to everyone in the crowd. After He had passed bread to everyone He distributed the fish.
The Bible tells us that the crowd ate until everyone was full and then there still were twelve baskets of bread and fish left over! Can you imagine how surprised the young boy and the apostles must have been when they watched Jesus use the small meal to feed over 5,000 people? Sometimes Jesus used things that may have seemed small and unimportant, such as one little boy’s lunch, to accomplish great things. In the same way, even though we may feel small and unimportant sometimes, God can use us to accomplish great things.
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