HEARTS AND MIRACLES (9)

“And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with COMPASSION for them, and HEALED their sick” – Matthew 14:14                               

Compassionate HEARTS are crucibles for MIRACLES of Healing and Multiplied Blessings: “And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with COMPASSION for them, and HEALED their sick” (Mt.14:14). The four Gospel writers included the story of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the multitude with small portions of bread and fish, clearly indicating its importance. It captures Jesus’ concern for both the material and spiritual needs of people. The Lord healed the sick, encouraged the sad, and fed the hungry. The Feeding of the Five Thousand recalls times in the past when God acted to feed His people. He provided manna in the wilderness to feed the Children of Israel during the Exodus (Exo.16). The prophet Elisha fed a hundred hungry men with twenty barley loaves (2Kgs.4:42-44). God fed Elijah in the wilderness after he fled from the threat of Ahab and Jezebel (1Kgs.19).

Although this season – following the beheading of John the Baptist – was for Jesus a time of physical exhaustion and emotional distress, He was not deterred from positive Compassion and Action. Jesus had brought His message to His own people, only to receive a stunning rejection in his home town of Nazareth, where the people were so angry with what He said that they threatened to throw Him off a steep cliff (Lk.4:28-30). The religious authorities were dismissive of Him, criticizing Him and His followers for their infractions of minor rules governing eating and religious observances. This was the context in which Jesus and the disciples suspended their active ministry in order to observe a time of retreat from the preaching trail and spend time in a deserted place to strategize and recharge emotional batteries.

But the crowd would not permit a retreat; they pursued Him, travelling long distances to see Jesus, and ended up with no food left. The disciples expressed a genuine concern to Jesus that the people would need to leave in order to avoid being stuck on the road, in the dark, at late hours, or in a deserted place without food. But Jesus’s Compassionate Heart took a different approach: They need not go away; you give them something to eat! In calling for the disciples to get involved in this crisis of a temporary refugee people, the Lord established the standard expectation that His followers should use their COMPASSION to make good things happen. This miracle was not to be seen as some kind of dazzling spectacle for fame, but to model compassion, resourcefulness, and generosity.

His instruction – “You give them something to eat” (v.16) – challenged the disciples to address the problem and not ignore it. Now, the God of Abundance is challenging our “theology of scarcity” – “We don’t have enough, we cannot do this, it’s out of the question, we should not even try. We have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” He wants us to think not in terms of what we lack, but in terms of what we have in Him: A theology of Plenty! There are no limits to what God can do when we give Him what we have, no matter how little. God will do the rest: Bless and multiply it. We step out in faith, not because there have billions in the bank, but we have the vision, sense the need, and are willing to trust that God would provide.

This is a clear call for us to cultivate Compassionate Hearts and for the Church of Jesus Christ to be a Compassionate Church, which hears the cries of people, irrespective of who they are – their class, colour, creed, or ethnicity – and responds to their needs. As God’s Vessels, all people deserve our concern. Individual believers should never be so engrossed in their own problems or concerns that they withdraw from the world and refuse to provide help and support when others are in need, hungry, lost , or alone. It’s easy to have the “Send them away” kind of heart. But the Heart of Christ is the Compassionate Heart that generates Miracles of Multiplied Blessings!