Earlier this week, I forgot a slice of bread in the toaster. Coming back a couple hours later, I decided to do something I haven’t done in a long time. I decided to feed the birds. Taking the slice out of the toaster, I set it on the counter to dry out. Now I have to admit that it’s been so long since I was involved in putting out bread for the birds that I spent some time pondering how long I needed to let the bread dry out—and probably erred on the long side. A couple days later, I could barely break it in my hands and thought about tossing it in the garbage. Still the thought of watching birds gobble it up caused me to keep on putting it out. It’s kind of like that in the Christian life as well. Sometimes we feel inadequate and dried out as we allow ourselves to be broken for God to use.
N.T. Wright in commenting on the feeding of the five thousand writes— “This is how it works whenever someone is close enough to Jesus to catch a glimpse of what he’s doing and how they could help. We blunder in with our ideas. We offer, uncomprehending, what little we have. Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fishes, money, a sense of humour, time, energy, talents, love, artistic gifts, skill with words, quickness of eye or fingers, whatever we have to offer. He holds them before his father with prayer and blessing. Then, breaking them so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us to give to those who need them. . . . And now they are both ours and not ours. They are both what we had in mind and not what we had in mind. Something greater and different, more powerful and mysterious, yet also our own. It is part of genuine Christian service, at whatever level, that we look on in amazement to see what God has done with the bits and pieces we dug out of our meager resources to offer to him” (from Matthew for Everyone).
The next time we feel disappointed with our broken pieces, let’s trust God to use them to feed a multitude. After all, broken pieces of bread go farther than whole loaves. So let’s keep putting them out.
Laura