How God does math

One of the first arguments my bride and I had was over food. Not just any food. That wonderful delicacy many of you know I'm about to bring up.

"You took two Oreos." This was no accusation. It was logical deduction.

"Can you prove that?" she responded.

The problem for my bride was that I happened to be (still happen to be) an Oreo connoisseur. Combine that with an accounting degree and a natural tendency to count everything, and it was pretty straight-forward. Consider the evidence:

• We had no kids or pets at the time.

• The door was locked, with no signs of a break-in.

• I recalled 9 Oreos in the cookie jar when I left that morning. (To be fair, there had been 14, but 5 Oreos had made for a satisfying breakfast.)

• She was studying at home all day for a nursing school exam.

• By afternoon, there were 7 Oreos in the cookie jar.

Slam dunk. Case closed. To this day, I'm impressed there were only two missing.

How we satisfy our appetites

I don't know about you, but anytime I'm counting food, it's my mind and appetite preparing for me to enjoy that food.

I suspect the disciples were planning to have those seven loaves of bread for themselves. They'd just posed a question indicating no intention to share theirs with the thousands of people present that day: “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” The idea of this crowd getting their hands on the disciples' bread wasn't even a thought.

The thought doesn't occur to us either, does it?

We gravitate toward filling ourselves. We're living appetites. And as we often say, what's true at the physical level is true spiritually as well. I want to be uplifted, inspired, filled up, and overflowing. I want peace like a river, joy like a fountain, love like an ocean. I crave that, and so do you.

But if I'm honest, my natural way to have all that is to go about it the way I do with food: count it, protect it, hoard it - for myself.

When keeping is subtraction, and giving is addition

Enter God-math.

I love God-math. It defies our human logic, while not wasting any of what it starts with. And God seems really into addition and multiplication. It's right here in the passage.

We get to the most amusing verse of the passage on the heels of Jesus asking how many loaves they had:

"When he had taken the seven loaves..."

What exactly did "taking" the seven loaves entail? Did they hand it over willingly? Somehow I doubt it. Was there a wrestling match? God tends to win those.

Or did he just skip all that external stuff and soften their hearts to hand it over?

Regardless, he took their seven loaves, gave thanks, and gave it back to them to distribute. Not for them to eat - even though they brought it to this gathering. To distribute.

And you know the story: 4,000 people ate and were satisfied...on seven loaves of bread and a few fish.

But the best part was to come.

How God fills His disciples

Apparently the people were so satisfied that there were leftovers.

Seven basketfuls to be exact. The same word for basket shows up in Acts 9:25, when people are lowering Paul through an opening in a wall in a basket. Imagine: a person-sized basket filled with fragments of bread loaves.

Consider what just happened: seven loaves feed 4,000 people, and at the end? Seven basketfuls of bread. More than they began with. It's God-math.

There's something we can't miss here:

When Jesus' disciples hand over - and then hand out - the loaves in their lives, Jesus satisfies hungry people.

I don't know if the disciples ate with the 4,000. But what they gathered up as part of doing what he'd asked of them as disciples was just as incredible - if not more incredible. Basketfuls of the fragments of what Jesus had done.

The question is still posed to us today: "How many loaves do you have?"

We've all been given loaves of bread:

• Family & friends

• Physical provision

• Church

• Grace

• Creation

• The cross

• Our Savior

• The word of God

• The Holy Spirit

You could keep them to yourself. But you know who's abundantly full and satisfied?

Those who distribute those loaves into the lives of others. Somehow those are the people who - after distributing it to others - still have an abundant measure of it for themselves.

It's God-math.

Until next week,

Nathan