Read This Morning

I don't often do this, but it penetrated me so deeply this morning...

"I confess that I sometimes feel so inadequate to meet the crowd of needs that surrounds me. Like that little boy with the lunch basket (John 6), I feel that the loaves I have are so small and the fish, so few. How far will they go among so many?

And yet I know that you manifest power through the weak things of this world.

You used a barren couple past the age of childbearing to create a nation as populous as the sand on the seashore. You used young shepherd with a slingshot to slay a giant. You used a poor little boy with five flat loaves of coarsely ground barley bread and a couple of small fish to feed thousands.

Help me to see, Lord, that this is how you characteristically work.

Help me to see that I don't need the adequate bank account Philip recommended or the abundant assets Andrew hinted at. All I need is to place what I have in your hands like that little boy did.

Give me the faith to realize that you will bless what I give, no matter how small the loaves or how few the fish. No matter how meager the time or the talents or the treasures I place in your hands, you will multiply them.

I don't have much, Lord, but I give you what I have. Take my coarsely ground life and the small skills that accompany it. Take them in your hands. Lord. Bless them. Multiply them. Use them for your glory and for the good of others.

Help me to realize that you are the true bread of life. Whenever pangs of hunger grab at my soul, help me to see that the bread in other windows-no matter how seductive to the eye or sweet to the taste-is not what I should be eating. Train my spiritual palate to long for you. And teach me that you are my daily bread and all the bread I will ever need.

Lord Jesus, I have a friend who has never tasted such bread. Her name is __________. She has sampled from life's smorgasboard, tasted from all that life has to offer. But she is starved for something more. Starved for love. For acceptance. For forgiveness. For meaning and purpose.

Help me to lead her to you, Jesus. Prepare her heart so that I might be, as someone once said, merely one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread."

--Ken Gire
Moments with the Savior
p. 170-171