As a young girl, raised in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, my go-to bedtime stories were My Bible Friends, and one of my favorite stories is of the big difference a little boy can make. Back then, though, and even recently, I put myself in this story: “I could be the one with the loaves and fishes!” “I could be there one with what Jesus needs!” “Jesus can use me for his next miracle!”

I very rarely saw past my own childish egocentrism.

But I read something recently about Jesus miracle of feeding the multitudes that got me thinking about it more deeply. In doing so, I have considered what it means for me today–not just me, as the little boy in the story, the little girl reading Bible stories.

Matthew recorded two distinct miracles in which Jesus fed a multitude. Both are quite similar. In Matthew 14, Jesus had traveled out into the wilderness after hearing his friend and cousin John the Baptist had been killed.

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick (Matthew 14:13-14, NIV).

Jesus wanted time to Himself, but that’s not what He got. Instead, He was called to minister, and He did…well into evening.

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat (Matthew 14:15-16, NIV).

When the disciples came to Jesus with concerns, they brought up their location (remote) and the time (late), urging Him to send the people away to town to buy themselves something to eat.

“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered (Matthew 14:17, NIV). 

What did the disciples have? The small lunch of a congregant is what they noticed, but what they had was so much more than that. They had the Savior Himself, standing among them.

“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people (Matthew 14:18-19, NIV). 

The people had followed Jesus through the wilderness and then they followed His directions to sit on the grass and wait for His blessing and for food. What they gained through their obedience was bread straight from Heaven.

They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children (Matthew 14:20-21, NIV). 

In children’s stories and in cartoon renditions of this miracle, the fish and the bread are multiplied, but Matthew 14 says Jesus gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then when all were fed, there were twelve basketfuls of broken pieces leftover–broken pieces of bread.

I’ve realized lately that Jesus’ miracle wasn’t a multiplication of a little boy’s lunch, after all, but was more likely his creating bread from Heaven as God so often did in Scripture. So I wonder…why bread? The answer is easily found at Jesus’ last supper feast where He declares “this is my body.”

Read a different way, the stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes are really stories of Jesus giving Himself to the multitudes. The stories clearly state Jesus offered the bread, but He commanded His disciples to pass them out. The size of the crowds would mean the disciples passed the bread into the crowds, but then the people passed them along to others.

In this way we also can pass Jesus to others. He offers Himself to us while we’re with Him in the wilderness, and He sends disciples along with pieces of Him. Some of us are disciples and some are passing pieces of bread from the disciples’ hands to other hungry hands, and some of us are the starving ones–in the back of the crowd.

One popular saying says, “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” I say, we are not beggars. Sitting cross-legged in the wilderness, hanging on every word of Jesus, we are not beggars. We are recipients. We don’t have to find bread, or search for it. We simply need to open our hand.

I was never the boy with the loaves and fishes. I have always been waiting for bread. Now that I know, my hand is open.

Dive Deeper

Exodus 16

Read Matthew 15:29-39

John 6:25-59

Matthew 26:17-30