You Feed them!

There is one line in the feeding of the 5000 that always seems to jumps out at me when I hear that story. When the disciples try to wrap up for the night and send everyone home for dinner—Jesus says to them.  Don’t send them away—you give them something to eat— you give them something to eat.     

There is something powerful about Jesus looking into the eyes of his disciples and saying—you fix this—you take care of it—you feed these five thousand people. And those words remind me that when it comes to God-God seldom works alone, but rather God chooses to work with and through his followers to make miracles occur. 

Just a little bit of background about this miracle—first off this is the only miracle that happens in all four of the Gospels. This story  was so important to the writers that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all of four of them include it in their own Gospels. 

Second it isn’t just  5,000 people—that number doesn’t include the women and children—for some reason they weren’t counted—so I can’t imagine how big that crowd might have been.  Maybe 10,000—Anyway—it’s amazing what happen everyone gets fed and there are 12 baskets full of food leftover.

This week I wasn’t really sure what God’s spirit wanted me to say about this  particular passage –I felt like those words “you give them something to eat” was to be the basis but it wasn’t until Friday or Saturday—when I scrolling through my twitter feed  that it started to become clear--  I came across this headline on my twitter feed—“85% of Americans are unaware that 20 million people are living on the verge of starvation."  Included with that tweet was a link to an article in Time Magazine about a famine in Africa that is affecting places in Nigeria, Somalia,  the South Sudan and Yemen.   The articles said that there are 20 Million people who don’t have enough to eat—the United nations is calling this the worst humanitarian crisis since World War 2 and I had no idea—The article said 

Every ten minutes a child dies from this famine. So across the course of this service --4 children will die and everyday 144 children will die because they don’t enough food to eat.  20 children died at Sandy Hook elementary.  So this famine is causing seven Sandy Hooks every single day.-Day after Day after day. 

The UN has asked for 6.1 Billion dollars to help alleviate this famine.  The crisis is so bad that some of the worlds largest NGO’s have banded together to form  a coalition called the Global Emergency Response Coalition—the coalition includes organizations like Save the Children,  Oxfam and World Vision. But it hasn’t been just been NGO's both Pepsi and Black Rock Energy have developed matching programs to encourage folks to give to help fight.   

As I read and thought about the crisis-Jesus voice continued  to  echo through my head “you feed them.”   So dear friends, I would like to invite you to join me in doing something about this. Yesterday I gave to the coalition from my discretionary account and last night at dinner my family decided we wanted to personally support this.  I invite you to personally support this effort and give the Global Emergency Response Coalition.  I invite you to find out more about this famine— I invite you to post or share something on Facebook or social media—I invite you to tell a friend about or contact our elected officials to encourage our government to respond more vigorously.  

When the earthquake in Haiti happened—half of all Americans gave something-that is amazing.  What if half of all Americans gave to this- we could put a serious dent in that 6.1 Billion dollars.   

Jesus I believe blesses our efforts even when we don’t think we have anything to offer.   Remember when the disciples essentially said to Jesus the problem is too big ---There are five thousand and only 5 loaves and two fish.  Jesus says give them to me—he  blesses their response and it all works out. 

Well we are looking at 6.1 billion dollar and all we essentially have is 5 loaves and two fish and yet we are called to share and let Jesus take care of the rest.

I truly believe Jesus is saying to us—you feed them.   How will we respond to Jesus?

AMEN