Inside Out Families: Living the Faith Together

4 Come, Go with Me

63 4 Come, Go with Me I have a closet full of fabric for the sewing projects I dream of, and I subscribe to quilting magazines. But I have not made a quilt in years. Buying fabrics is a start, but it does not make me a quilter. I love to plan such projects and gather all the tools and materials, but then I have to live with the guilt of not doing them. I am the same way about the importance of exercise and diet. I like to read about healthy eating, and I faithfully pay for a gym membership. If I do not actually get some exercise and eat healthily, however, I may know how to improve my health, but I surely will not be healthier. Christian faith is like making quilts and getting exercise and eating right—it is about doing. God will not be concerned on the last day with whether we worried about the hungry or the poor, or even if we could spout with dismay and righteous indignation statistics about the rates of poverty and the lack of food security in our world. God will be concerned with what we did about the needs of our neighbors, even when those needs seemed overwhelming and we wondered where we could possibly intervene that would actually do some lasting good. Surely the disciples, when confronted by a multitude of hungry people, were similarly overwhelmed and were sure there was nothing they could do in response that would really count for much of 64 / Inside Out Families anything. They were out in the countryside, where a great crowd of people had followed Jesus: When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:5-14) I can only imagine the dismay the disciples felt when Jesus told them to feed more than five thousand people. How could their inadequate resources possibly matter in the face of thousands of people? When Jesus asked the disciples how they planned to address the need in front of them, Jesus already knew what he was going to do. He asked what they were going to do to teach them, to test them. As a teacher, I always mean for tests to be opportunities for learning. I doubt my students see the learning in the test; they think the learning comes in the preparation. Perhaps it does, but often it is when we attempt to answer problems that we actually learn the lessons. Preparing can only take us so far. This feeding of the thousands of people on that hillside—with a boy’s lunch box equivalent of a tuna fish sandwich—was Jesus teaching the disciples. Jesus often used children to teach adults. People were hungry, and it was late, and this little boy simply offered what he had, as Come, Go with Me / 65 insufficient as it was, in the face of the need before them all. It was up to Jesus, then, to bless and multiply the loaves, which he did. Most of us have seen a child put a coin in an offering plate or give a beloved possession as an impulsive self-sacrifice...