When the Task Is Too Big for Us

This is a quick thought...

I was reading is John 6 the other day, where we read a familiar story, one of the few that is in all four gospels.  Jesus was teaching a huge crowd by the sea, when the evening came.  Jesus told his disciples that they should feed all these people.  The first reaction, recorded from Philip, was natural: "We have no money or any other means to buy bread for these people!"  In other words, "Jesus, the task you have given me is too big.  I give up."  Then another disciple spoke up.

It was Andrew.  Andrew didn't really have a solution, but he said, "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?"  Like Philip, Andrew did not see how it would work.  But instead of insisting he had nothing, he gave what he had, inadequate as it was, to Jesus.  Philip and Andrew seem to be agreeing on the surface, but Philip spoke in defeat, while Andrew spoke and acted in hope.

Our task as a church, as well as our tasks as individual Christians, sometimes look way too big.  Most of us have heard it said, even using this story, that what seems small in our hands can be more than enough in Jesus' hands.  It's one thing to know the story and how we're supposed to apply it.  It is another thing entirely when the time comes to begin a task that, on the surface, has no chance to succeed.  Will we get started with hope, using the little that we have and trusting Jesus, or will we give up before we even start?

Will we be Philip or Andrew?