What do you have?

Matthew 14:15-18

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

“Bring them here to me,” he said.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

Think through how it’s happened. Being close to Jesus has turned into the thought of service; Jesus takes the thought, turns it inside out (making it more costly, of course), and gives it back to you as a challenge. In puzzled response to the challenge, you offer what you’ve got, knowing it’s quite inadequate (but again costly); and the same thing happens. He takes it, blesses it, and breaks it (there’s the cost, yet again), and gives it to you—and your job now is to give it to everybody else.

This is how it works whenever someone is close enough to Jesus to catch a glimpse of what he’s doing and how they could help. We blunder in with our ideas. We offer, uncomprehending, what little we have. Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fishes, money, a sense of humor, time, energy, talents, love, artistic gifts, skill with words, quickness of eye or fingers, whatever we have to offer. He holds them before his father with prayer and blessing. Then, breaking them so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us to give to those who need them (187).

A. Orendorff

What a paradigm for ministry. Standing close to Jesus, we see the need—the very real and pressing need—of the people draw toward Him. They’re there to hear and to be healed, draw by some strange mix of curiosity and hope. But they’re also hungry. Seeing their need, we simultaneously understand that what we have isn’t nearly enough. Send them away, we conclude. There’s so much to be done, so many problems, such unbelievable odds.

“What do you have?” Jesus asks.

“Not enough,” we respond.

“Give it to me. Let me break it. And we’ll see together what miraculous things can happen.”