Just Playing Devil's Advocate by Lorraine Triggs

Who hasn’t played devil’s advocate or admired the devil’s advocate among us? Me? I’ve done both. One definition of this idiom says that it refers to someone who intentionally takes the opposite side of a popular opinion or idea in order to encourage thought—thought that typically turns into an argument, over which the devil’s advocate can be heard yelling, “I was just playing the devil’s advocate. I really don’t believe that.”

The actual phrase has its roots in the medieval Catholic church where someone had the position of advocatus diaboli to argue against the canonization of a particular candidate, deliberately looking for flaws in character or fake miracles.

Why do we like playing devil’s advocate so much? Perhaps it’s the chance to show off how smart or quick-witted I am, or maybe we’re just bored with the discussion and want to liven things up. Sadly, I know people who think “devil’s advocate” is their spiritual gift.

Or perhaps we want to show up for the debate and argue people into the kingdom of God. We’re just being like Paul we rationalize to ourselves. Actually, the devil’s advocate style of debate is very un-Pauline. In the Book of Acts, we read that in just about every city Paul visited, he would go to the synagogue. Acts 17:1-3, describes one such visit: “. . . they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.’”

In Athens, Paul wasn’t debating for debating’s sake. It was bigger than that. His spirit was provoked when he saw a city full of idols (Acts 17:16), and he could not, would not keep silent about the one true God.

This Jesus Paul worshiped and proclaimed was rarely on the side of popular opinion when he was on earth. Instead of playing devil’s advocate, Jesus told stories. He told stories of lost sheep, coins and sons and accounts of good Samaritans and not-so good priests and Levites. He wrote in the sand, dismissed scribes and Pharisee and forgave a sinful woman.

In John 8:11-13, the Pharisees were primed for an argument when they came seeking from him a sign from heaven. Instead of taking the bait, Jesus is described by the gospel writer as sighing deeply in his spirit because of their request. Instead of boxing them into a corner over who he was and why they couldn’t see who was right in front of them, he sighed deeply over this generation’s need for a sign.

So, when Jesus called down woes on the scribes and Pharisees or talked in extremes of losing one’s life to find it, of hating mother and father, of taking up crosses and forgiving enemies, people paid attention. We need to pay attention. Jesus will never say, “Just kidding. I don’t really believe that.”

Psalm 119:89 explains why: “Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens,” and that Word was in the beginning with God and was God and—in the greatest mystery of all—became flesh and lived among us full of grace and truth.

Why in the world do we admire someone or strive to be that person who advocates for the devil when we already have the perfect Advocate—no flaws, no fake miracles, no deceit, no going back on his word—who chose to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The One Who Confunds by Wil Triggs

I like to think I grew up at the beach. As a boy, there was nothing better in life than standing at the shoreline, waves washing up around my legs, the feeling of the sand washing back out in the receding surf as the ocean gave a hiss and another wave crashed and brought more wet sand to circle around my legs. In time I learned to venture out beyond the breaking surf, no feet touching the bottom, swimming with the rolling tides in the ocean—ever so much better than the measured and chlorinated waters of the public swimming pools where I also swam.

I always hated to go home from the beach. Once I heard that if I held a shell up to my ear, I would hear the ocean in it. I tried collecting shells and holding them up to my ear, hoping, but to no avail—no ocean in any of them.

We are a viscerally impulsive bunch, we humans, you and me. After years of study, we think we’ve figured God out. But the call is not to figure out.

Jesus says “Lazarus, come forth.”  We stumble up from the dead of sleep, emerge from the tomb-like cave of self-assured faithfulness. Emerging from the best sleep in a long time, stepping out into the sun, wondering, “What are these graveclothes wrapped around me? I’m starving; I haven’t eaten in days.”

Wait. Where am I? When life goes crazy wonky, God confounds.

When he was feeding thousands, everyone loved Jesus. Imagine the Jesus they thought they might be getting: a political and governmental takeover followed by miracle feedings that would eliminate famines; much less food would be needed when it can be multiplied so easily and free for all.

We think we can grasp it, make it our size, like a child holding the lion-shaped stuffy. When he tried to explain that his bread is something that is without end, people said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

We think we know what we want, but Christ confounds and, in the confounding, comes blessing and truth.

Then comes a storm. And when he came to his terrified disciples, walking on the sea, his followers did not rejoice. They did not worship or praise. They were petrified. And when he stepped into the boat, they immediately arrived at their destination.

Wait. What just happened?

He then answered a question with the assertion that there is no eternal life for people unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Eating from the multiplied fish and loaves donated by a young man is one thing; eating the flesh and blood of a person you think is the messiah, eating at his instruction, that is something altogether different, some might say horrifying.

Wait. What’s going on?

So, “when many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’”

Earthbound ears cannot hear the song of the rolling tide to heaven. This is not a path for us to trod. It is for one person only. If we could have walked that road, if we had been able to swim that channel, there would have been no need for him to come at all.

But we could not and we cannot come; he did. And he bids us follow.

People commodify and package, or try to, handling it expeditiously, quickly, and then we’re on to the next. But, blessedly, Christ confounds.

Though he became flesh, our flesh is no help at all in grasping this. The flesh and blood of Christ revealed by the Spirit is the only way to grasp it and then to do so with open hands.

Wait. What did he just say? What did he do?

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”  (John 21:6a)

But, by grace, I do think I hear it in you, dear brothers and sisters, like holding a shell up to my ear and hearing the sea for real, a man in the Midwest, dreaming of someone or somewhere far away, in Hawaii or the Caribbean or Cornwall, Coronado or Carmel, of some other sandy ocean place, our church.

So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. (John 21:6b-8)

I hear the sounds of surging surf; I hear it in you, a word, the Word that gives hope and life, that is truth as natural as the sound of the ocean in a shell, not a philosophical or theological argument, something instead as simple as a crackling fire on the beach, morning sun shimmering on the foaming waves, breakfast on the grill—the Word come to life in and through us but not us. The Lord’s Table this Sunday.

When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” (John 21:9-10)

Tides and times confound, the shifting sands around my feet swirl, this church, the people, he knew and knows and makes known.

I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)

One Big, Beautiful Blue Birthday Cake by Lorraine Triggs

“We want to make you a birthday cake, Mom, from scratch!” my sisters and I announced. My sweet mother agreed and turned over her kitchen to her daughters, whose curious minds more than made up for their inexperience in the kitchen.

We found a recipe for a two-layer yellow cake and began to follow it, well, sort of, until we pulled out the box of baking soda and the tin of baking powder. “They both will make the cake rise,” my more scientifically inclined sister pointed out.

We decided to add both in more than good measure to the batter. We did not want the cake to suffer from fallen-cake syndrome. We test-tasted the batter. It tasted fine to us, and we carefully slid the two cake pans into the oven.

Next the frosting—sugar, milk and vanilla. We pulled out the container of white sugar and the bag of powdered sugar. They’re sugar, so we dumped both into the frosting bowl, adding milk and sugar, milk and sugar, milk and sugar until we achieved our desired consistency.

The frosting, however, lacked color. Out came the food coloring. Blue—Mom’s favorite color. Two drops turned the frosting into a lovely pale blue. Not content with that, we added two more drops, then two more, then two more. The frosting turned a deeper shade of blue with each added drop, until the bottle was empty.

Frosting done. It was time to pull out the cake from the oven. Imagine our delight when those single layers magically had turned into two, and we could now present our mom with a four-layer birthday cake—except we only had enough frosting for a two-layer cake. No problem, just more splashes of milk, maybe more sugar and we were good.

Our mother ooo-ed and ahh-ed as we placed the cake in front of her as we cut into the big, beautiful, blue birthday cake—baked around the edges, but raw in the center. Our mother gamely took a small bite of the cake as we shouted, “It’s raw. Don’t eat it.”  Not even our own mother could eat a piece of what was now a big, blue, gloppy birthday cake. Seems we got carried away with the add-ons.

There are times when life resembles a gloppy blue inedible birthday cake.

For me, it’s add-ons to prayers. I’ve read Philippians 4:6. I’ve memorized Philippians 4:6. I know Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Because I can’t quite shake the anxiety, I add to my requests the specifics I expect from him. When others share their prayer requests, I listen, fully intending to pray for them, but not before I add my fix-it to their situations.

It's a grace that God doesn’t need our add-ons to answer us. It’s grace, because he already knows what we need to keep our lives from becoming a gloppy mess.

On the Gospel Coalition site, Doug O’Donnell writes in his online commentary on Matthew 6:19-34: “The three reasons given not to be anxious are that anxiety is unproductive (“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” 6:27), unnecessary (“look at the lilies, behold the birds!—how God cares for them” 6:26), and unworthy (“life is more than food, and the body more than clothing,” 6:25). Why worry about what God will surely provide? The concerned Christian focuses first and foremost on spreading the reign of Christ on earth.”

It’s a grace because God doesn’t want anxious followers who feel as if everything depends on them when, in fact, nothing does. It’s a grace—and a relief—that we have everything we need and more in Jesus. As the hymn “Like a River Glorious” reminds us:

We may trust him fully
all for us to do;
they who trust him wholly
find him wholly true.
Stayed upon Jehovah,
hearts are fully blest,
finding, as he promised,
perfect peace and rest.

Nothing added, nothing more needed.

Two Scoops of Idolatry, Please by Wil Triggs

As we began a new season of kindergarten ministry a few weeks back, we were getting to know the children. In that first week, they seemed remarkably well behaved. 

Given that the curriculum was situated where the Old Testament prophets were speaking out against rampant idol worship, we were tasked with explaining idolatry.

“What do you love?” I asked the children.

“God,” one of the little girls answered.

Good answer. The best answer, really, but not what I was looking for when teaching about idols. The one thing God is not is an idol.

“Well,” I said, “I love teacher Lorraine and I love chocolate.”

OK. They got it. Hands started to go up with answers of their own. They had permission to give an answer that wasn’t God. They came up with all kinds of loves of the lesser-than-divine sort.

Pizza. Brothers. Videos. Sisters. Pokémon. Tacos. Pets. Soccer. Mom and Dad.

The discussion went on to a sort of debate about what might be most loved until one person shouted with childlike gusto “Ice Cream.” All people in the room—teachers and students—agreed with this one. We all love ice cream.

So, I asked the children, “What if we loved ice cream too much. What if we had the First Church of Ice Cream?” Judging from their reaction, that should be our next church plant. We’d get a lot of visitors, that’s for sure. But of course, it was a crazy example, fun because we all like ice cream, and then we started naming different favorite flavors. 

Everything we named is ok, maybe even good, to love—things or people we should love. There are many good things to love in life. But what if we mixed up one of those objects of affection with the first answer: God.

Christians mingle fun and pleasure with holy and devout. Sometimes that’s the point. They are not opposites. We affirm life and good things. We laugh. We can even like laughing. Eating ice cream can even be a way to celebrate the wonder of the God who makes all things good. But the fun, good and precious things of our hearts ought not to grab hold of us and turn our hearts away from Jesus the great rescuer.

There is only one God. So we must be on alert for whatever idols might be in our hearts. They’re there. We have only to look. Loves can become idols without realizing it. Somehow we have to turn our eyes away from all the other loves to the first answer: God. 

He is our first and best. With so many other loves and distractions to which our eyes might so easily turn, we must fix our eyes on Jesus and keep our first and best love first and best

I have a passion for these kids to love Jesus. They can love him in their kindergarten way. They can be serious, believing Christians. Like Paul writing to the church in Corinth (2 Cor.11:2), I am jealous for them to not embrace the idols all around us and the particular ones that vary from child to child, person to person. It’s not just our class but all of us at church to be pure as a virgin bride in our steadfast focus on the groom down the aisle we are walking toward at the front of the church.

Jesus, in your perfect love, may we love you. Guard our hearts from ravenous lions that seem so appealing. May we be steadfast this day--our actions ones of tender loving thoughts and acts and prayer, horizontal expressions of vertical love and gratitude.

In the weeks since the first mention of ice cream, the children have remained well-behaved. I know it’s only a matter of time before they relax and feel comfortable enough to transgress. As we have been learning, the people of Israel kept failing. God made promises and so did the people, but God kept and is keeping the promises he made.

Meanwhile, ice cream has popped up as an answer to at least one question every week. These are ice-cream-loving, people-pleasing kids. They learn well from their moms and dads and us teachers, too. When we give ourselves and our kids so many things to love, let’s love good things well, but not too much. May our answer to the question of most-loved and most-followed person in life always be Jesus.

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:20-21)

Come Ye Sinners, Polite and Pleasant by Lorraine Triggs

With smoking prohibited in her house, one of my childhood friends had a disgusting habit of taking a puff or two on any cigarette butt she found. “But I only pick up the ones with lipstick stains on them,” she reassured me. Phew—at least her disgusting habit had a modicum of decency.

Like my sins have a modicum of decency, or so I think. Unlike the obvious indecent works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21—sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, sorcery, enmity, drunkenness and orgies. When I read that, I reach the obvious conclusion that my sins are pretty respectable compared to those sins. I give Colossians 3:5-9 a cursory glance—yep, not the sins I, a nice, pleasant Christian, would commit.

It’s a second and closer reading of those Galatians and Colossians verses that jolt me from my complacency. What are my decent sins doing there with the indecent ones? A smidge of jealousy about a friend’s accomplished children isn’t in the same category as sorcery. Doesn’t everyone get angry? There was nothing malicious about it; it was simply anger, and I was tired.

When we coddle our nice sins, there’s often a subtle shift in our thinking—that Jesus died for good people, the nice and polite ones who deserve salvation. We then seek out other good people and share the good news that they are not as bad as some people are, and Jesus came to improve on their already pleasant lives.

I might try to cover my sins with a veneer of polite excuses, but one of the hardest Scriptural truths for me to swallow is that there is no such thing as nice sins. Sin is sin. There’s no accommodating even the nicest of sins in God’s Word. Colossians 3:5 doesn’t say “put to death therefore the really bad sins and keep alive the good sins.” It states bluntly: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. . .” 

These third and fourth verses of the hymn “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,” remind us why salvation never was and never will be through niceness and politeness.

Let not conscience make you linger,
nor of fitness fondly dream;
all the fitness He requireth
is to feel your need of Him.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
lost and ruined by the fall;
if you tarry till you're better,
you will never come at all.

“Nor of fitness or politeness or niceness fondly dream.”

Instead, come, poor and needy sinners, come, polite and pleasant sinners, come

“.  . . everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3 Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)

Remembering to Remember by Wil Triggs

This month a Jack in the Box fast food restaurant is opening in Carol Stream. I remember this place from growing up in California. Instead of the sleek purple and red logo of today, back then part of the signage was a giant three-dimensional clown’s head that looked down at the parking lot. Seems like part of a bad horror movie.

My first job interview took place at a Jack in the Box. We sat there at a table in the restaurant and the interviewer asked me “Why do you want a career with Jack?” It was probably not a great idea to edit the question of an interviewer. But I replied, “I don’t want a career; I just want a job for the summer.” The second thing I remember is that I didn’t get the job. These two memories may be connected. They were looking for a career man, and I wasn’t looking for a career.

Seeing that new Jack in the Box under construction brings me back to the clown head of childhood.

I remember learning to walk, and my head seemed heavy, like the muscles in my neck struggled to keep it upright.  I must have had some balance issues. I remember being frustrated because I kept losing my balance. This gingerly balanced head of mine was going to wobble left or right or back and forth and keep me from standing straight, the weight of it with every step shifting to a side where I didn’t want it to go, and then I was on the floor, standing up to try again.

And then there was speech. Words on my tongue spoken to those around me seem to have always been there. Figuring out how to make sound. Speaking new sounds and words, body and mouth as a sound-making instrument, every sentence a sort of song or aural experiment.

Then came reading. It's harder for me to remember when I could not read because I have come to think of it as a part of who I am. My reading defines me. Your reading defines you. Learning this skill happened in school for me, first and second grade perhaps? Well, I guess it also happened at home where curiosity got the better of me. What were these symbols?

Before I could walk or speak or read, before I could work, before most of the stuff of life, God was there. He wasn’t in the work or the words. He wasn’t in the catechism or the creed. When people look to find him in things, they’ll come up empty. But God wasn’t just present; he was close. Even though I didn’t realize it, he was beyond-imagination close.

And yet he was also strangely unknown. Sin comes too early to remember. Before we know what sin is, it’s there. It doesn’t seem like sin. It just seems like normal. Even as a child, anger turns into the tantrum. The desire to do what I’ve just been told not to do. My urges controlling, not knowing the limits or knowing and not caring. Slapping another child just to hear the sound of my hand against another’s face. I like the way that sounds. Do it again. Mom says one thing, I do another.

With sin came pain. The forbidden cookie. A pinch from another kid hurts. If you fall on the playground, you become familiar with the scrape of sin, the bloody nose, a bruise, a scrape, a burn, applying pressure to help the bleeding stop and the body beginning to heal itself. Amazing and ordinary. That’s how natural a part of us is sin.

The most elemental memories in all of life are none of these. They are not even about me. Here they are:

When Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

God came incarnate. He grew like we did, learning to walk and talk and read and work. Yet he did not sin. His Father was close, so close. He saw what we cannot see. He looked into the heart of every me. As elemental as sin was to us, that’s how no sin was to him.

Nothing and no one else could do what he did and what he does. It was a horrible road to death made worse and best because he had no sin and took on ours. He made the “me” of each become the “one” of us.

Father, maker of goodness, ever-giving, knowing, loving, you sent the only one who could rescue and made a place even for me at the table.

Incarnate Son—elemental, primal, personal, eternal, Jesus, you came to know and live and be with us, to die for us and live again.

Spirit, now and today at this moment, you give both solitude and never-aloneness, going on and going together, not alone.

“This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:24b-25b

When we come to the life of the wedding feast, when we live the eternal life, we have to learn everything over—walking, talking, reading, working, living not for ourselves but for Jesus and for others, remembering to remember, looking back but also ahead, not for a season, but a career calling for all of life, a call beyond life, a life in him, alive in him, this meal and person and Savior that was and is and is to come.

Best Face Forward by Lorraine Triggs

In the heady days of the Jesus Movement, my church youth group and its sister youth group planned an evangelistic outreach at our high school. We publicized the event with buttons and posters and invited friends to a lunch period meeting on the football field, all in line with the school’s open campus lunch policy.

Right before lunch, the PA crackled: “The meeting on the football field has been canceled.” Turns out that my oldest sister had spent the morning in the principal’s office defending our right to meet on the football field during lunch.

The exasperated principal pointed out to my sister (who was her class valedictorian) that we were the good kids. What were we thinking? The principal sent my sister back to class. Call it the earnestness of youth, but we were surprised at the school’s reaction. The principal was right—we were the good kids, so why pick on us?

That was an early lesson in the world’s response to Christians. A while ago, a mom’s group on social media had a long thread about kids at the high school inviting their friends to—horrors—youth group. One mom complained that her son went to church and liked it. I was sad as I read this thread because some of those Christian kids are probably ones I know and love. Theirs is a harder lesson than mine regarding the world’s response to Christians.

By the time the Apostle John wrote his epistle, he was no stranger to the world’s responses as he wrote to struggling faithful believers, “Do not be surprised, brothers, when the world hates you.” (1 John 3:11) He was only echoing what he heard Jesus say, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:19)

It's trending among Christians to zero in on the last part of this verse: “therefore the world hates you.” But to focus on that is to miss the reason why the world hates us: “because you are not of the world.” The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are strangers and exiles on the earth headed to a city designed and built by God.

So being hated by the world should not come as a surprise. After all, as strangers and exiles, the more we set our minds on the eternal world that is and is to come, the more uncomfortable we’ll be in this world.

However, what does come as a surprise to a world that hates us is when we love them. Ray Van Neste in his commentary on 1 John on The Gospel Coalition site writes: “Love is essential to the nature of God, so one cannot be a child of God without taking on this family resemblance. Christians naturally love others just as babies naturally cry. Love is the distinguishing mark of Christians, which is why itis a terrible tragedy when the Church presents a different face to the world.”

When unbelievers look at us, may people see faces that, as the familiar hymn says, have turned to Jesus and have looked full in his wonderful face. Because it is then that the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

Let’s put our best face forward to the world—whether it hates us or cozies up to us—a face like Stephen’s in Acts 6:15, where “all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.”

Not So Amazing People: The Growing Boy by Wil Triggs

He was naturally curious. He wanted to see Jesus. He wanted to hear Jesus. And it was quite a hike out to where they were. So of course, being the growing boy that he was, he went prepared. That is, he wanted to be sure he wasn’t going to miss lunch. This thinking-ahead did not go unnoticed.

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” (John 6:9)

So, when the disciples came to take his about-to-be eaten lunch, I wonder what he was thinking. The disciples didn’t know what Jesus was going to do when they approached him, so they couldn’t have said, “The Master needs to borrow your food so he can use it to feed you, us and everyone else.”

We don’t know what the disciples said when they came to take away his meal. Was there any reticence on his part to hand over his lunch to the disciples?

Children eating well is a big deal. I was a picky eater growing up. My mom told that my growth and future were contingent on my eating enough food every day. “You have to eat,” she would tell me over and over when I struggled to finish a full meal. I’m sure today’s moms and dads are equally concerned that their children eat the right food.

We need food to live. So, giving away food is a little counterintuitive.

It’s not always food that the disciples ask for. Fall ministries are starting back up. Some spots are still open for service.

Snacks in Kindergarten Bible school are Goldfish crackers and sometimes water. Imagine my telling the kids that seven goldfish crackers would feed all 40 of them, even if it’s just for a snack.

Or what about at your place of work? One person’s Bento Box to feed the whole office.

So, this growing boy had a pretty decent lunch for one, and instead of Jesus or the disciples urging him to eat as a parent would, they asked him for his food. They asked him to give it away.

In our world, this is not a normal thing to ask a kid. We develop programs to make sure kids get enough to eat.

But in the new kingdom, God asks us to give away most everything in one way or another: our time given away in service, our clothes given away to the poor, our homes opened as places of refuge in a variety of ways. Our food. What if this is the gateway to giving away even more? This is not a normal, everyday way of living.

A miracle feeding is in every gospel. I wonder if we take it for granted? Have we lost the sensation of what it must have been like to have Jesus take our packed lunch and literally make lunch for thousands of people from it?

I sometimes put my feet in the sandals of the boy. I’m thinking the disciples can have one of my fish and one of my loaves; that way I’ll give some and still have some left over for myself. But this boy gave it all and they took it all. That doesn’t seem right, not healthy, possibly to our modern minds, not even ethical. Jesus still could have done the miracle with just part of the lunch given. After all, he was multiplying food.

What self-care is there when I give away the whole lunch? I mean, isn’t that a little extreme? Out of whack? Not a responsible use of my resources?

And yet that is what Jesus does every single day of our lives. He wants all our fish and all our bread.

If we give away our time and our hearts in service to other people, what might God do? More than enough food for us, that’s what. He gave away everything, and he wants us to come as close as we can to doing the same.

All of life is better when it passes from my hands into the hands of Jesus, the one who has compassion on the hungry crowds. He knows, too, that I am one of the hungry ones. He asks me to give everything not because he doesn’t know that I need food. He knows everything. And he loves.

Lord, don’t let me be just one of the hungry multitude, even though that’s what I am. I long for your call. Choose me even now. I relax my hands. I open them. Here are my words, my time, my attention, my wife and son and home, my food and drink, my heart and soul. Take everything. Use it all as you wish. Help me to give all my fish and bread to you without reservation or hesitation.

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. (John 6:12-13)