Picnic Impossible

“So He suggested to the crowd that they sit down on the ground, and, taking the seven loaves, He gave the blessing, broke them, presented them to His disciples to distribute, and they handed them around to the people.” Mark 8:6

I love shows like “Restaurant Impossible.” You know the drill; a promising restaurant is now failing. The management or owners think they have the best food in town, but behind the scenes we see a kitchen infested with roaches and a cooler with rat droppings. The wait staff is snobby to customers and the décor looks like a 1970s dorm room. Along comes the master chef and with just a few days, a limited budget and a bullwhip of an attitude, transforms the dingy dive into a 5-star eatery.

I’m not sure what could have been done in this case. Let’s crunch the numbers. There were over 5,000 customers to be served by only a dozen staff. Though a world class chef, He was the only one in the kitchen. That comes out to about 1 person for each 385 customers.

Hopefully the menu will make up for the time our diners will have to wait for their food. Oh, but it is not to be; there are only seven round loaves of bread and “a few small fish”. If the customers had any idea how little food there was, they would have hightailed it to the nearest McDonalds.

But, in a super-sized version of the TV show, Jesus does the actually Impossible. You see, the Restaurant Impossible of television fame is more literally Restaurant Improbable. It can be done. It is Jesus’ meal on this mountain that is truly Impossible.

The miraculous begins once the ingredients are placed in His hands. The disciples gather what they can find, and, though entirely too tiny for even a light snack, they hand it all over to Jesus. Once in His hands He can prepare the Impossible meal for those who might have “gone home hungry” otherwise.

Given away freely, the ingredients can now be blessed. Jesus will not force us to give up our lives. But, in the moment we offer Him what is in our hands, He can bless it, and use it in impossible and miraculous ways. He blesses what I was willing to take from my hands and place into His. Only that which I give up, as small a portion as it may seem, is that which becomes blessed in His hands.

In his hands Jesus blesses the bread and fish. He takes it from the disciples, and speaks the goodness of God to the small meal. I meet so many talented people. Many have great opportunities to shape the world around them. May I suggest that placing those gifts into Jesus’ waiting hands will allow Him to imbue them with a divine blessing that mere talent can never possess.

After blessing the food, Jesus breaks it. The loaves had to be broken so they could be distributed. But it is important to note that He does not distribute the loaves whole, and allow the people to break off the bits. Brokenness is safe only when done in the hands of Jesus Himself. He knows how to lovingly break our pride at being a “full loaf”, open us up so the delicious aroma is released, and multiply us to feed so many more than if we had managed to keep ourselves “whole”.

He gives it back to the disciples to distribute. The miracles always happen when we let Jesus take, bless and break our gifts. But He loves us enough to allow us to be part of the miracle. He does not take our gifts to take them away, He takes them to divinely enhance them and give them back to us to meet the deepest hunger of those around us.

We can apply this in so many ways, but the process is always the same. Willing to bring Him even our smallest “gift”, Jesus receives it as if we have brought Him all the gold of the world. Anything we bring with true devotion is plenty in His eyes. He takes our gift, and blesses it, thus taking our mere human offering and infusing it with His attributes of goodness, holiness and love.

He does not return it, though, until broken. He may allow us to go through painful times of rejection or reexamination of ourselves so that we yield a far more flavorful result. But any breaking is done in the safety of His own hands. Then, He offers back the gift we brought to Him, refined, blessed, and ready to distribute to the world that waits hungrily for a real look at the Impossible things that only God Himself can do.

Allow Jesus to take your talents and gifts, your moments of time or your material goods. Know that He only desires to bless them and return them to you, usable for the Impossible tasks that only occur when the King of God’s Kingdom takes charge.