All four Gospels record the miracle of Jesus feeding the multitudes (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:32-44; Luke 9:10-17; and John 6:1-13). Jesus fed hungry multitudes twice in the Gospels. The first time was 5,000 Jewish men and their families.

John tells us about a young lad that Andrew brought to Jesus. We don’t know how he found him, or who he was. He had five small barley loaves and two small fish. Barely enough for a growing boy. But he willingly, we think, handed his lunch over to Jesus and well, you know the rest of the story.

I’ve often wondered about that young man. None of the writers gave us any information about the boy. We don’t know who his parents were. I think we assume his parents were there too, but nothing is said to make us think one way or the other. (Tomorrow’s blog will be about his mom, by the way.)

It has been held by some that the young man was John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark. I don’t know how that got started but that’s what some claim. We just don’t know. All we know is that the boy gave Jesus his lunch, Jesus accepted it, blessed it, then proceeded to break it into bite size pieces and fed 15,000 hungry people with 12 baskets of leftovers.

I wonder what the boy told his mom when she asked him if he had eaten? Even more so, I wonder what kind of stories he told his buddies when he got home.

He might be like a rookie basketball player with the Chicago Bulls, named Stacey King. In 1990. King entered a game with not very much time left and scored one point from a free throw. In the same game, Michael Jordan scored 69 points. During the post-game press conference King said he would always remember this night as being the time he and Michael Jordan teamed up to score 70 points.

I wonder if the young man told his buddies about how he and Jesus had just fed 15,000 hungry people with 12 baskets of leftovers.

The truth is, that whenever we team up with Jesus, there is no limit to what good can happen. Anyone of us plus Jesus will always make a winning team.

Give him everything you got. A little or a lot. He can take it, bless it, break it, and do amazing things with it.

Always in Pursuit!

Don