Meeting Needs - Thurs 20 Sept 07

We have been working our way backwards through the gospel of John. Today we’re going to stop off at chapter 6: Jesus, his disciples, a very big hungry crowd and one small boy: the feeding of the five thousand.

No one came expecting lunch. They had come to see the sick healed, to see if this man Jesus was the Messiah. They weren’t really all that concerned about lunch. No one would have expected Jesus to have fed them; that would have been unreasonable. Feeding themselves was really their own responsibility.

But Jesus cared about their physical needs, the mundane mattered to him.
It was to be a lesson in trust for the disciples and a miracle of a small boy’s faith that so little could go so far. God cares about your physical needs, whatever they are today. But as one of his disciples he also looks as us, looks at the crowd and says to us ‘you feed them’!

On Saturday 29th September, there will be an open air café outside St Oswald’s. We’re not expecting 5,000 but 500 might be possible. Free teas and coffee, information about health, education and the opportunity for prayer, it might seem little to offer by a few but let’s pray that in God’s hands our ‘little’ will go along way’