God’s perspective: Packed lunch
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
John 6:9
“There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?”
The drama on the Galilean seaside is heating up. Philip has completed his observations and his calculations. He has done a quick count of the crowd and, apparently, has some idea of the available cash-in-hand. “The 200 denarii we have with us,” he may have said, “could be used to buy some cheap barley bread in the nearby town, but even if we buy such cheap bead with this money we won’t get enough bread to feed all the people I have counted here.”
Jesus gave Philip a test and, good as he was at calculations, he was failing the test. Like many of us we make a quick assessment of the circumstances, look at our resources and go off in deep despair. At other times it’s the opposite, we look at the circumstances, evaluate our resources and say – I got this.
Either way, whether our evaluation shows us that we have resources adequate to the task or that we don’t, we should not make out next move without gaining God’s perspective. God always has a different measure of what the available resources are and how they could be used for your good and His glory. This is important because, for some of us, we only go to God when our backs are against the wall and we don’t have, in our minds, enough resources for the task at hand. But back to the story.
While Philip is probably standing before Jesus in despair because his knowledge of the situation renders the question, that Jesus put to him, impossible to answer, Andrew comes up with a seemingly bizarre and useless piece of information – there is a young boy here whose mother gave him a packed lunch.
Well, what do you know? Here was practical Philip highlighting the problem. Philip saw in the natural, he saw the magnitude of the problem; he saw the hopelessness of possible solutions. Then, on the other hand, here was optimistic Andrew looking for something for God to use and finds a packed lunch. Why would Andrew even mention the packed lunch when what he found was probably a mother’s estimate of what her growing boy needs to keep him up if he was going to be out all day chasing after the new Miracle Worker and other attractions in the city during the feast? As any parent knows, growing boys eat a lot.
Some of us stay near to Jesus long enough to learn to trust him with whatever we have and whatever we can find. Those of us who do that take it to Him and line it up with the problem and wait on God to reveal His perspective on the situation and give us direction. The others of us remain focused on what we can see and what we can compute and try figure things out on our own. We even pray but still remain focused on our own efforts.
Andrew, had a different perspective, God’s perspective. Earlier in the Gospel, as recorded here by John, there was a story of a wedding in Cana, also in Galilee. They had a problem; things were heating up but the wine was running out. That must have been some wedding! Mary, the mother of Jesus, was told about the problem and so she went to her problem solver, There were clearly no practical solutions to this problem as Mary went to Jesus.
After Mary’s conversation with Jesus she told the servants “Whatever He says to you, do it” – John 2:5. Mary had learned that Jesus has a perspective on both the problem and the available resources and He will give the direction that leads to the solution for our good and His glory.
In the Old Testament, in chapter 20 of Second Chronicles, we have a story of King Jehoshaphat. The Moabites and Ammonites, and with them some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle. He was advised about the situation, he did his quick calculation and knew that his resources were not adequate to the circumstances. He was afraid. From his perspective, it was an impossible situation, he was out numbered and out “gunned.” He said to God, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
Andrew reported his find, though still carrying some human doubt, knowing that Jesus would do the rest.
Think of these things:
How to develop a Godly perspective
- Recognize that our own thoughts and reactions are unreliable most of the time and stop and pray and seek God’s mind on the matter before us
- Do not contemplate or undertake any major action without prayer and a searching of the scriptures
- Spend time developing a Biblical worldview so that our instinctive reactions and action are based on that permanent framework
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would learn to leave our own assessment of the challenge and our own measure of the resources and take them both to God to get His perspective.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex