God's economy.

“The cost of feeding one.”

A great crowd was following Jesus. It had already been for three days full of hope but with empty stomachs so that they were about to faint from hunger.

Jesus who made the world out of nothing once again feeds the multitudes of thousands out of a lunch bag consisting of two small fish and five barley loaves of bread. This is known as the miracle of the feeding of five thousand men plus women and children.

While everyone is amazed at the miracle of how so little can feed so many, there is a greater miracle that few pay attention to in the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the Three thousand. A careful observation of these two miracles will lead us to the conclusion that God needs less to feed more and the leftover is also amazing in contrast to what the balance should have been. The real miracle is the care of one person’s needs. In comparison nothing is leftover.

Let me be brutally honest with you and my family.

During the last year what the Lord has spent in keeping me alive is what I would consider to be the equivalent to the yearly budget of my village.

The real miracle is the care of the individual in all its multiple needs and wants. No amount of money seems to be enough to care for one person.

But the beauty of it all is that no matter what the budget might be to keep us alive, God is never one cent poorer at the end of the Fiscal Year. A Lion’s cub might go hungry but not a child of God. Eaglets might starve in their high nest when the mother Eagle falls victim to a hunter’s bullet, but not a child of God. What a God, what a God, what a great God.

The real miracle seems to be the care of one individual more than the care of multitudes. How does God take care of an individual today? By disguising himself in other individuals thus keeping his promise that the fellowship of the Saints is our inheritance on this earth. The inheritance on this earth has no value in Heaven; it is meant to be spent in the here and now, not in the hereafter.

Gerry Gutierrez.

PS. Fifty years of fellowship as inheritance of the Lord.