May 28, 2010
Broken Pieces
When I think about Jesus picking up the basketfuls of broken pieces of loaves and fish after the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000, I’m reminded that He also picks up the broken pieces of our lives. After a crisis is over many of us move on with the busyness of life and often forget what the Lord has brought us through. As Jesus was trying to warn the disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they had forgotten the lesson of the leftover loaves and fish. To their forgetfulness Jesus said, “Oh you of little faith…” (Matt 16:3-12)
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Gail;
-----This life is hard to figure. Jesus said, “...if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” (Matt 17: 20-21) “Ask and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matt 7:7-8) “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?” (Matt 7:30) Yet, in spite of prayer and faith, relationships fail, jobs are lost, businesses collapse, people get sick, accidents happen, and to everyone comes the punctuation of death. Even to those who live cautiously wise by the Holy Word happenstance lurks around some corner to deliver its devastation.
-----You draw a useful parallel to the loaves and fishes - the breaking and shredding of our lives, yet the collecting of the resulting pieces. “The plans of the mind belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” (Prov 16:1) We are given responsibility in survival and benevolence. For most all of us, the clothes come upon our backs by our own hand. We must stand up by our own volition and work for our own food and shelter. And we must reach out from our own supply with our own hand to the one who can neither work nor put his shirt upon his own back. We have choices to make within these responsibilities: where to live, what to do, how much to spend, how much to save. These choices are our plans, and the longer we live the more shaped by them we become. Yet to both those who include the Lord in their plans and to those who do not the great shredder of plans comes. The answer of the tongue. But when the shredding is over and the tears have dried, it is notable that the pieces of fish are still fish, and the pieces of bread are still bread. And they are still useful. With a little rearrangement their benefits often seem to reach even further than they seemed to reach before.
-----God’s interest in the lily arrays it greater than even Solomon was arrayed. Yet it is not arrayed for its benefit alone, but more for that of the mosaic in the field. He feeds and clothes each of us with the same interest. We individually are of interest to Him, yet we are collected into a basket of His specific purpose. The breaking and tearing that fits us together may be easier to endure the more we commit our works to Him, yet we will be broken and torn all the same. The moving of the mountains, the gifts from the asking, the findings of the seeking and openings of the knocking are found in the understanding of how perfectly the pieces fit in the basket to serve His purpose. Remembering that purpose buys the effects of our crises into a mental storehouse for the carrying on of busyness even more glorifying to God.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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