Yesterday in our daily team prayer, we read through the first section of John 6. It was timely. And inspiring to our team. And ultimately the answer to prayer that I needed. Isn’t it funny how that works?
You know the story. Jesus meets with a crowd of 5,000 on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and asks his disciples “Where are we going to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” This is early on in Jesus’ ministry, so the disciples should probably be forgiven for the trick question Jesus just posed to them (see verse 6…hint hint). Of course, Philip looks in the money bag and basically tells him, “It’s impossible…we don’t have enough money.” Andrew shows Jesus a small boy holding “five fish and two loaves” and expresses the same sentiment: ‘It’s impossible…we don’t have enough food!’ No money. No food. Good luck!
Both Philip and Andrew assume the limitations of what is in front of them controls the very outcome at hand. And who can blame them?! It is, for our humanness, the most reasonable suggestion possible. To believe that you could feed five thousand with a single small basket of fish and bread is a ludicrous idea.
But of course, you know how this story winds up. Every. Single. Person. present had their fill: “as much as they wanted” (v 11).
We talked about this story in our prayer and devotional time yesterday. And we covered the usual tropes and lessons about how God can do the unexpected. How he can take what is in front of us in scarcity and make a surplus out of it. Maybe you have had similar thoughts in reading this story. They are true and important.
But then one of our staff members pointed out something that none of the rest of us saw. She saw the after-miracle promise—not from Jesus to the crowd, but from Jesus to his disciples: “…so they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets of left over bread.” If you are an analytical reader of the Bible, you know that numbers very rarely do not have a deeper significance. In this case, there were twelve-baskets, one for each of the twelve disciples. Each filled with their own insufficient “fragments” (v 13). Fragments that would not be enough for them to fill bellies, but far more than enough for Jesus to fill others to their fill. The miracle of the feeding of five thousand has simply never stopped because Jesus keeps giving his disciples baskets of fragments from which He can work!
This year, I have had the phrase “bread and fish” in mind almost every day and in a number of different directions. Of course, so much of the work we do at Assurance is through the “bread and fish” work of Jesus and the baskets of fragments He gives us to work with! In our work with clients, we often see limitations that presume the very outcome at hand. We hear stories that leave us feeling scarce in resources. We run into emotions, relationships, socio-economic conditions, and pragmatic difficulties that leave us feeling like we barely have enough in our basket to offer! We say, “Oh Jesus, my basket only has fragments. I do not have enough for this person!” to which He responds, “Let me fill them to their full.”
And as I stand here at the end of the year with twelve days left in the calendar year part of my job—indeed, part of my honor—is inviting people to support this ministry’s work in 2025 in a myriad of directions, including financially. But I’ll be honest: I woke up yesterday morning with anxiety about what was in our ministry’s operational basket. It is no small feat as a 100% donor funded organization to raise yearly support for a staff of over a dozen (between part time and full time) and eight very important no-cost programs, each dedicated to reaching and serving those facing unplanned pregnancies while, simultaneously, working to save as many children as possible from abortion! It is a feat that in human reason requires a large basket with a lot of food.
At the present moment, we are about $100k short of meeting our annual revenue budget that will take us into 2025. That, in my human estimation, is about the same as having “five small loaves and two small fish” to feed five thousand and looking to Jesus saying “What were you thinking?! There is no way we can feed the crowd that you have brought here!”
And yet, of all the passages we could have read yesterday—when the not enough voice was at its loudest, it was that one: Bread and Fish. The same phrase that God has kept in my mind every day for the past six months. The same phrase I have used with our staff about the rippling effect of our work across generations. The same phrase I have used to describe the aggregated ministry contributions that for over forty years have kept us operational!
After prayer I went down to my office and wrote this on my white board. It will stay there until January 1st, 2025.
It is my personal reminder that Jesus just asks us to hold the basket of fragments He gives us and trust him—not us—to feed His people from it. Whether we feel like we don’t have enough to give a client in crisis or we don’t have enough coming in at the right time to support this work, ultimately if we trust that Jesus is the Lord of Bread and Fish He promises to feed the crowds through us!
Jesus, I pray that our ministry would never look like it has a full basket. I pray that we would never be in a position where we think we are the ones feeding people from our own abundance. I pray that we would only ever have enough in our basket to know that you are the one who makes an abundance of bread and fish in our lives, in the lives of our clients, and in the work and ministry of this organization. Fill the bellies of our clients “to their fill” while we keep holding baskets of the pieces small enough to continue to need to trust you.
If you would like to make an End of Year Gift to Assurance to help us reach our $100k goal, you may donate HERE or by sending a check to:
Assurance
Doctors Park, 1517 Nicholasville Rd, Suite 405
Lexington, KY 40504
