Matthew 15:29-39
The Daily Office
As the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra, once said: Wow! Déjà vu all over again. Yes, you heard much of this earlier in ch. 14. Once again, Jesus feeds a huge crowd with what amount to scraps. What I find most surprising here are the thick-headed disciples. They were there the first time. Why would they ask, again, “Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?” Perhaps the problem is the same we have today. Every day, we are faced with needs – ours and others – that will surely overwhelm our scarce resources of time, talent and treasure. When that is all you see, every day of your life, it is easy to forget that our God is a God of unimaginable power.
The point here is not that Jesus will always give to you, or to me, the resources and strength to feed the multitudes. That would seduce us into thinking that we really can do it ourselves. We can’t, but that is not our problem; it’s Jesus’s problem. We are called to offer what we can actually offer, each day, and trust Jesus to provide the rest. How Jesus will do that is not for us to know, but to trust. At the same time, we are not to simply throw up our hands at the first sign of scarcity and say, “It’s impossible! Why even try?” As the old civil rights songs goes, “Keep your eyes on the prize.” But also remember that you will get to the prize one step at a time.
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