What’s in Your Sack?

I have been sitting at my computer most of the morning catching up on emails and reading blogs written by author friends. One of them was written by Nick Harrison titled The Surrendered Writing Career.  I appreciated what he had to say. While I was pondering his thought a vision of the little boy who gave Jesus his lunch came to mind.

You might be familiar with this story in John 6.  In John 6:8 Peter told Jesus, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

I’m wondering how Peter found that little boy in the crowd of 5,000?  Did the little boy overhear Jesus talking and offer them? I guess it really doesn’t matter.  Looking at John 6:5, Jesus knew what He was going to do. The boy was a vessel. What he had was miniscule compared to the need of the 5,000. By the way, John 5:10 says there were 5,000 men.  Add to that the number of women and children, I’m guessing there were more like 25,000.

I wonder if Jesus smiled or winked at him as the boy gave them to Jesus. There’s so much one could add to this story, but Jesus gave Jack Dorsey the idea for Twitter, so 140 or less characters was sufficient to tell us the interaction between Jesus and the boy. The story goes on to tell us that Jesus took the bread and fish, blessed it, and distributed it to the people–not a slice of bread and a taste of fish, but as much as they wanted. An all you can eat buffet.

Don’t you wonder how big the eyes of the boy and the disciples were as the loaves and fish multiplied. I doubt that Jesus created a huge stack of each. There were no tables as the people were sitting on the grass. And where did the baskets come from? Maybe there was much more than meets the eye or the ear. I think this is how Jesus operates. He majors on the important issue. Anyway, I can see each of the twelve disciples taking a basket with a little less than a loaf of bread and 1/6th of a fish in the basket and coming to the first person, giving them the piece of bread and fish and left in the basket was the same amount of bread and fish. Wouldn’t that be fun?

How does this relate to us? Each of us come to the Lord with a small idea for a story. We give it to him and he multiplies it into thousands of words. Then what? Do you think the little boy went to Jesus after all the people were fed and said, “Jesus, I know I gave you my bread and fish. I saw how you multiplied it, but I want them back now. I have other plans for them.” Hmmm. Doesn’t seem right to me, but this is what I do. I give my novel to the Lord and then, little by little, I take it back. Then I give it back to him and take it back again.

Will I learn to give it to Him and leave it in his care? I hope so.