When faith is impractical

Picture yourself on a hill, you are just a few feet from the top of the hill with a few of your friends.

Picture the side of the hill, there are thousands of people sitting and struggling to listen. They look hungry, it is getting late. You know that if they start back now, it will get dark by the time they reach the nearby town, and the shops will be closing. You know you and your friends have just enough for yourselves, maybe a few rotis and a bit of sabzi.

Picture the top of the hill on which your teacher sits teaching these people. He pauses in his teaching and stops and just looks at the crowd of people with love. And then he turns and looks at you.

What do you do?

Do you choose to tell your teacher that the people are hungry? And that by the time they get back, shops would be closing? That he should ask them to leave now or they may go hungry through the night?

Or do you choose to tell your teacher that the people are hungry, and you have some food but nowhere enough for all the people? That you are concerned for them and would like to figure out what you all could do to serve them?

In all honesty, my response would have been along the practical lines of the first one just like the disciples in Mark 6:35-‬36. Which probably seems a good and godly response born out of concern and practicalities.

But the questions really, for me, in this season, from this passage of the feeding of the 5000 (Mark 6:30-44), are:

Am I seeking to have a relationship with and serve God and others with my calculations, strength and wisdom, or am I seeking to have a relationship with and serve God and others with His guidance and strength?

Do I try to make myself the hero in my story, or do I recognise God as the hero in all our stories?

Do I operate trusting God will indeed partner with me when I seek to partner with Him and multiply the whatever I have no matter how little or insignificant I feel it is like He did with the bread and fish, or do I operate thinking I am in this all alone?

What about you?

Rohan Michigan

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