Faith and Chicken Wings

A few days ago, I opened my Bible at random to John 6:1-15. It was the story about where Jesus fed the 5,000 with the food on hand- five loaves and two small fish. Okay, familiar passage. Next? (My personal study habit is to switch back and forth between two of my Bibles, the Message and the New International Version.) I set the first Bible aside and opened the second one at random to Luke 9:10-17. It was the same story, only this time in a different gospel. (Incidentally, the feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle recorded in all four gospels. That shows us it is extra important.) Okay God, that was weird... Next?

That's what happens with familiar passages. We read them, and remember the story line and sermon points from countless repetition over the years. It is so familiar that we mentally dismiss it and move on. All the lessons we already learned, right? But God wasn't finished with me on this point.

The next morning, I was praying in bed and God showed me a large sheet pan with a single hand-breaded piece of chicken on it. It was tiny- about the same size as a chicken wing-- if you cut the wing in half, that is! Totally unimpressive. Yet here it was, ready to go in the oven. Yeah sure. I'm going to need a lot more than that to eat! "But God, why did you show me this? What does it mean?" I asked that question, and even journaled it. Then my mind wandered to the two passages on the feeding of the 5,000 that God brought me to back-to-back the previous morning. (I'm sensing a trend here, God?)

Sometimes we end up in situations like this, where the need is overwhelming and the supply on hand is a drop in the bucket. We typically respond in one of three ways. Sometimes we get angry that God put us in this impossible situation, and we respond to God's promise with sarcasm. Other times, we accept the inevitable and mentally give up. And sometimes... sometimes... we respond in faith.

Moses? He got angry and sarcastic with God. (Fine example, Moses.) In Numbers 11, the wandering tribes in the desert have been provided with manna every day-- bread from heaven. But now they are complaining that they want meat. I can hear the chanting now--

WE WANT MEAT! [pause] WE WANT MEAT!

God responded to the mini-riot by giving instructions to Moses, recorded in verses 18-23:

"Tell the people, Consecrate yourselves. Get ready for tomorrow when you're going to eat meat. You've been whining to GOD, `We want meat; give us meat. We had a better life in Egypt.' God has heard your whining and he's going to give you meat. You're going to eat meat. And it's not just for a day that you'll eat meat, and not two days, or five or ten or twenty, but for a whole month. You're going to eat meat until it's coming out of your nostrils. You're going to be so sick of meat that you'll throw up at the very mention of it. And here's why: Because you have rejected GOD who is right here among you, whining to his face, 'Oh, why did we ever have to leave Egypt?' "

Moses said, "I'm standing here surrounded by 600,000 men on foot and you say, 'I'll give them meat, meat every day for a month.' So where's it coming from? Even if all the flocks and herds were butchered, would that be enough? Even if all the fish in the sea where caught, would that be enough?"

God answered Moses, "So, do you think I can't take care of you? You'll see soon enough whether what I say happens for you or not."

God did provide meat, vast quantities of quail, but God was displeased by their complaining and struck them with plague. It was so bad that the tribes chose to re-name that location as a memorial. They called it Kibroth Hattaavah- "Graves of the Complaining." Some of us are habitual complainers [sheepishly raises hand.] If this is you, you may want to re-think that response!

Another way people respond to a hopeless supply situation is resignation. in I Kings 17, there is a famine, and God sends his prophet Elijah to a widow in Zarephath, a village in Sidon, for food. (I wonder, did God send him to a foreign country to get him out of his comfort zone? Conjecture on my part, but did He?)

As he came to the village, he met a woman, a widow, gathering firewood. He asked her, "Please, would you bring me a little water in a jug? I need a drink." As she went to get it, he called out, "And while you're at it, would you bring me something to eat?"

She said, "I swear, as surely as your God lives, I don't have so much as a biscuit. I have a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a bottle; you found me scratching together just enough firewood to make a last meal for my son and me. After we eat it, we'll die."

This woman was resigned. She knew she was about to die. It was a unsolvable problem, and she was giving up.

Elijah said to her, "Don't worry about a thing. Go ahead and do what you've said. But first make a small biscuit for me and bring it back here. Then go a head and make a meal from what's left you you and your son. This is the word of the God of Israel: ' The jar of flour will not run out and the bottle of oil will not become empty before God sends rain on the land and ends this drought.' "

And she went right off and did it, did just as Elijah asked. And it turned out just as he said-- daily food for her and her family. The jar of meal didn't run out and the bottle of oil didn't become empty: God's promise fulfilled to the letter, exactly as Elijah had delivered it!

Although resigned, she was obedient to God in giving out of what very little she had left. God honored it and miraculously provided for her.

Fast forward roughly 800 years to the scene of a Galilean hillside and a similar situation. There is a huge crowd gathered-- 5,000 men, plus women and children. They have been following Jesus for three days straight, hanging on his every word, but now the people are physically hungry. (I get that. I am hungry and distracted if the Sunday Sermon runs long.) Jesus tells his disciples to give them all food. Seriously? One disciple sarcastically comments that a year's wages wouldn't be enough money to buy bread for everyone! But suddenly, there is a commotion. A little boy offers Jesus his lunch-- five small barley loaves and two small fish. It is enough for the boy himself, surely, but that's about it! But it is freely offered. Jesus blesses it, brakes it, and the people are fed. 12 baskets of bread are left over.

This third response to the problem-- the faith shown by the little boy in offering his lunch to Jesus- is where we need to be. To recognize the situation as hopeless, but to offer what little we have to God anyway.

Are you in this place, a unsolvable supply situation? I'm not at this precise moment, but I have been over and over again. Each time, God came through for me, sometimes at the last hour. And He will again-- I'm sure of it. As my former pastor Steve Meeks likes to say, "God is never late, but He misses many opportunities to be early!" If this is you, place your situation before God, and ask him what he wants you to do with the resources on hand. Then do it.

"You'll see soon enough whether what I say happens for you or not."

Little is much, when God is in it.