only 2 fish

Pastor John's evening message last Sunday was EXACTLY what I needed. I have felt the part of a failure lately. Whether it's a moment of honest evaluation, or just the sheer emotional exhaustion of the last 8 months of vomiting and heart burn and Olivia adjusting to life changing as often as waves hit the beach... Maybe I move more slowly than I realized. I used to see myself the adventurer, the explorer, the risk taker who thought little of consequences and simply experienced life. That's not who I am anymore, and I find my lack of fearlessness makes me feel rather sad too. Either way, my impatience has grown, my creativity has slacked, my endurance has waned, and my passion for life is nill. I see myself the way I think Olivia must see me and I don't like what I see. How could all of this be good? How could this be worth doing? How could she look back on this time in life and smile the way I do when I look back on my childhood? It's impossible!

Then John calls my attention to Matthew 14:13-21, and a bit of context from just before this story. John the Baptist has just been beheaded and Jesus is sorrow filled, setting off to seek isolation. There's an "it" used in vs. 13 that I wonder about... does the crowd hear about John the Baptist or about Jesus' departure? I sort of wonder if it isn't the prior. This crazy man eating locusts and honey in the wilderness who had a large following and had made many converts has just been beheaded. Be that as it may, the part of the story that actually hit me was the loaves and fish. He had this compassion on the crowd who had no compassion on him at all. He just wanted to rest, to ponder and grieve the loss of his cousin, and here are these people again. His brokeness made him susceptible to their brokenness; I want to be that kind of broken. Not to put up walls of renewed resistance, but to allow my pain to see it in others' eyes.

At the end of a long day he sees their physical need for food. The disciples suggest sending them away to go get food (I can imagine the extatic feeling of relief in discovering a legitimate excuse to send them away; much the way I feel about Olive's bedtime most nights). Jesus is much more compassionate, "you feed them". Eh?!? But this is our out! Besides, we don't have enough food. And my favorite part is that instead of sighing with a "if you want something done right, do it yourself" sort of feeling, Jesus simply asks them to give what they do have. And out of that great deficit He breaks it into more and more and more pieces until when everyone in that huge crowd of 5,000 men not counting women and children had eaten, there were 12 baskets of pieces left over.

And it's all a bit scarry because I know me. And I want so desparately to hold tight to my mere 2 fish and 5 loaves and not let him take them and break them and spread them around, but isn't that the truest kind of wreckless adventure I was designed for? Isn't life better when you look to bind up others' wounds than when you sit and lick your own? Aren't the stars happier burning up and the water happier bashing itself mercilessly against jagged rock after jagged rock?

At first the mystery was that He could take so little and make it so much, be it fish and loaves or the little ability to love that I have. Now that wonder is that I'm afraid of giving up my little to watch it become something so big... and He has me do it. He doesn't push me out of the way, he uses me. I wish it were easier to break myself open, but it is Christ who has to break the bread and give thanks for it, because it was He alone who could be the ultimate bread and wine eucharist; giving thanks before His very breaking.

Oh, broken one, eternally wearing the scars of your brokenness, teach me to thank You as I offer what I have. Teach me to put down the chip on my shoulder and burn wrecklessly. Help me to not look for the legitimate excuse but instead for the impossible service I could offer out of my lack. Help me not fight You as you take what little I have and break it into pieces, trusting fully that when You are done breaking there will be BASKETS FULL to be picked up... and let all of that feel more worth it than my "happiness".