Nourish ~ The Little Works

Welcome to Nourish: 31 Days of Family, Food, and Faith. This is Day 31! We've made it to the end. To see the rest of the series click here.

We were reading the story about the feeding of the 5,000 in the Jesus Storybook Bible yesterday morning when we got to the paragraph that read:

    

“What food do you have?” Jesus asked. “Go and see."  

Now, there was a little boy in the crowd. He had brought a lunch that his mother had made for him that morning. He looked at his five loaves and two fish. It wasn’t much— not nearly enough for 5,000— but it was all he had.  

“I have some,” he said.

We continued reading and came across some more lovely words which said:

     But Jesus knew the One who made all the fish in the oceans. And Jesus knew the One who in the very beginning had made everything out of nothing at all. How hard would something like this be for Someone like that?

I just adore that little Storybook Bible. It got me thinking and I asked the kids… 

"Who in this story besides Jesus, secondary to Jesus, might also be considered a hero?” 

“The little boy!”

“Why?”

“Because he gave up his lunch?”

“Yes but he gained even more lunch than he’d come with. Who else?”

“The disciples?”

“Mmmmm, not who I’m thinking of.”

“We give up.”

“Well,” said I, “who fixed the lunch for the little boy?”

“Oh!” said they, “the MOM!”

“Why, yes, yes indeed! The Mom.”

Have you ever thought about that before? In the crowd of 5,000 food was found in the hands of one little boy whose mom thought ahead a little. The gospel accounts of this story do not mention the boy's mother like our Storybook Bible does,  but can we, for now, assume that the boy's lunch was a result of his mother's action and then that she probably made him lunch every single day and that day, the one on which he wanted to go hear from Jesus, was just like all the other days she’d made his lunch except that day she just had to pack it up for him. And so she did. 

She made sure that her son had something to nourish him as he went along his way. That thing that she did every single day whether she felt like it or not, whether she received recognition for it or not, whether she felt valued in her task or not…that very packing of a lunch for her own son, became nourishment for 5,000 others. 

Would that I, that we all, would see the potential in the little works of nourishment that are ours to perform faithfully. Let me not think that providing nourishment in whatever form is a small task in the hands of the One who nourishes us best so that we may best nourish others.

The End.

{This post marks the end of the 31 Days of Nourishment series. Thanks so much for reading all of these words, some carefully chosen and others jotted in a fit of haste. I’m grateful for the encouragement that has been so generously offered by old friends and new, by my kids and my family, and especially by my Man, as the days of October have danced by.  November, here we come!}