Feeding the Multitudes

From Roya:

Feeding the multitudes: We are fed too! 🍞🐟

As I was reading the lesson “God the only Cause and Creator,” I saw the story of the loaves and the fishes in a new light. Of course, I got the sense of the perfection of everyone being filled, and the eternity of there being seven baskets full of the remains. Then, I read from the following section in Science and Health, “It is not well to imagine that Jesus healed for a select number or for a limited period of time, since to all mankind and in every hour divine Love supplies all good.” When I read that, it clicked for me that the seven baskets full left over are for us as well! They are Jesus’s provision for us (and everyone) in that beautiful moment on the shore of the Galilean sea. In that moment, I felt so clearly and dearly God’s love for me, mine, and all.

From Kit:

I was worried about supply and money, which is very unlike me. I know that we live in the abundance of God’s infinite creation and can lack for nothing, but the Church lease coming due and my personal sense on the subject seemed real and limiting. The description of how Christ Jesus fed multitudes with seven loaves of bread and a few little fishes was in the lesson and Roya shared with me the beautiful angel message that came to her of the eternal Christ and how the Christ’s provision of seven extra basket full was for us, all of us, for eternity. Her inspiration turned me to have a fresh and deeper look at how Jesus’s sense of the infinite supply of his Father, God, changed the disciples. I wanted to learn and grow in understanding as the disciples had on that day in Galilee.

The message of infinite provision that Roya talked of turned me again to how Jesus fed the multitude. It reads in Matthew 15:32-37 that Jesus said or did these things:

“I have compassion on the multitude,”
“I will not send them away fasting”
He asked his disciples what they already had for food,” How many loaves have ye?”
He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground (expecting good)
He took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

And the Bible tells that “they did all eat, and were filled”.

Jesus the Christ KNEW that God always provides for needs but what about the disciples? When asked for food to feed the multitude they looked at the impossibility of the project, “Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude? “ I have felt a little like the disciples at this juncture. “What, me feed the multitudes?”

But the disciples were the ones who had to distribute the blessed food to the multitude. This was the food they had kept for Jesus and themselves and they had to learn that they could give it away and give and give and give until they saw God. They saw the infinite supply that God gives. I want to be Jesus’s disciple and learn that lesson.

Then they were instructed to collect the fragments left. “And they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.” They were the ones handing around the baskets from person to person. They learned to receive abundance back. The blessed bread and fishes fed not only the multitude sitting on the ground on one sunny day sometime in the past but there was extra, a lot extra, seven basket full (completion and perfection expresses), to feed all who look to the Christ wherever and whenever they live.

In our church lease situation I understood that all the work we were doing was for the blessing of the community so that we could better serve all needs. I also understood that we were not giving receipts and estimates to the landlord as a hardball negotiation tool, but only to make her aware of the good being done in a sense of giving. And like the loves and fishes we will collect our seven basket full of what is given back, because that is God’s law, God’s law of abundance. The landlord, on her side, offered to reduce rent in light of our improvements to her property.