The world scene today is as frightening and desperate, as needy and inexplicable as I've ever seen it. There is a bewildering global economy that's sucking jobs overseas and lengthening unemployment lines. India and Pakistan are on the brink of war and armed with nuclear warheads. There is a threat of terrorism in every subway, stadium, and cockpit. A younger generation is adorned with spiked hair and grunge clothing; they are pierced, painted, and ready to party. Add that to Korea's intransigence, Africa's AIDS epidemic, and mix in over six billion people! We're left with a sense of overwhelming inadequacy.

What difference can one person make?

In the life of Christ is an episode that so impressed the twelve disciples that it is the only miracle of Jesus besides the resurrection that is recorded in all four gospels. And it is the story of a small group of people facing an overburdening need.

The Bible tells us Jesus retreated to an isolated hillside for some rest. But it was not to be, for a crowd of 5,000 men followed. And that's just the men counted in the tally. If you add a wife and two children to each man, the crowd could easily have numbered 20,000 souls or more!

So how does Jesus handle this massive interruption of his rest plans? He teaches them, heals them, loves on them.

It is a tradition for a rabbi to feed those who come to his house for learning. The disciples knew this, so as the day grew nigh to supper, they grew edgy. "Lord, this is a desolate place, and the day is now over, send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus startled the twelve by saying, "You give them something to eat!" John 6 tells us Jesus said this to test the disciples. Philip had already run the numbers. "Eight months' wages wouldn't even begin to finish the job!" This is not the voice of faith. It is the voice of despair. It is the voice of every church treasurer who looks at the world's crying needs then opens the church financial account to look upon paltry balance sheets.

Enter Andrew. He, too, had been doing some ciphering. "Lord, there is a lad here who has five loaves and two fishes," he explains (John 6). But then, too, he laments, "But what is that among so many?" Which is to say, such a sparse dinner cannot possibly make a difference.

That's when Jesus takes over. He receives the small boy's offering, blesses it, and causes the multitude to be fed miraculously. But that's not all. When supper was over and all had eaten their fill, the leftovers were taken up. And there were twelve baskets full. Which, I suppose, is Christ's clear statement to the twelve that if you give to Jesus, there will still be enough left over for you.

Today, as we stand on our own hillside amidst overwhelming need, I ask you, "What's in our picnic basket?" For, indeed, as the lad of old, we have something to offer.

Availability

One loaf in all our baskets is availability. As with the small boy who simply made his supper available, so we too can do the same. For it is forever not one's ability but his availability that matters with God.

In Virginia, a small church was hosting a bake sale and crafts fair to raise money for missions. The best cooks presented their pies, jams, and cakes. Men offered exquisite woodworkings. But Ellen, old and arthritic, took old clothing and cut the cloth to sew it into a patchwork quilt of red, turquoise, and yellow. It didn't sell, its bright colors so garish. So at the end of the day the money and leavings were boxed up and shipped to Africa to the waiting missionary. He opened the box of tools and money and thanked God for the needful things. The odd colored quilt he draped over a tree limb.

That's when the tribal chief who'd been particularly difficult to deal with came by and admired the quilt. He draped it over his shoulders like a cape and admired the effect. "What will you take for this?" he asked the missionary. "A piece of land on which to build a church," the missionary bargained. And the deal was made.

One never knows what God can do with an out-of-fashion quilt sewn by an 86-year-old widow with arthritic hands and offered to Jesus in faith.

Prayers

A second loaf we all have in our possession is intercessory prayer.

This summer I stood in the nave of St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig, Germany. This was J. S. Bach's old parish. It happens to be where the East German Christians gathered in growing swells to pray for the fall of communism.

Later, I walked the streets of Berlin, the dead zone of the old Wall. I thought of how brutal repression is no match of kneeling saints with folded hands persisting in prayer. Read of it in Daniel the prophet's prayers. When he prayed something happened in heaven, something happened in the demonic world, and something happened on earth. It is still the same today.

Faith

Yet, a third loaf we each have in our picnic is faith.

Andrew couldn't see God for the size of the crowd. Philip couldn't see Christ for the enormity of the hungry and the feebleness of his purse. Ah, but the wee lad saw not the multitude, nor even his own small dinner. He saw Jesus. And somehow he understood as Paul the Apostle was to write, "For he is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we ask or think."

So I inquire of you as Jesus did in the testing of the twelve. Do you see the crowd or Christ? Do you see the cost or God? Do you look upon your own reserves or the resources of the almighty God?

Do you have faith?

Suffering

Yet another crust of bread we all carry is our pain. The Apostle Paul wrote, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Corinthians 1:4). It is true as Hemingway put it, "Life breaks us all. But then we are strong in the broken places." No one can counsel an alcoholic like someone who has been there. It is the same with divorcees, the bankrupt, and the sick and lonely. The Lord wastes nothing. Our pain, and the comfort we've derived from Christ, is one of our best ministries.

I grew up in the affluence of the '50s and '60s in small-town America. My church was weak though my family was strong. In college during the hippy radical rebellion I had questions about God, the Bible, meaning in life, sex, Jesus, God's will, and authority. There was no one teaching on these things. Mostly I had to dig out the answers myself. That's why I return to the university for ministry so often today. I know the pain. I go to offer students "the comfort with which I've been comforted in Christ."

Experience

A fifth and final loaf each of us has in our dinner pail that we can hand to Jesus is our experience. Four out of the twelve original apostles were fishermen and when Jesus called them he said, "Henceforth you shall be catching men." Just as they'd learned to read the fish, to wait in patience for a large haul, so their experience would serve them well in evangelism.

At an opera in Belarus this winter, I met a man running for president of his country. He confided in me how the communists had ripped the entrepreneurial spirit out of his people. And he begged me to urge retired businessmen to his nation to mentor young Russians in how to start and run a business. "We need disciple-makers," he said with real feeling.

And so it is, if you've a skill, God can use it on the mission field - teacher, nurse, computer technician, well digger, physician, radio operator, pilot ... your skill matches a need somewhere.

It was Stephen Jobs of the computer industry trying to lure the head of Coca-Cola away from his high paying job so he could work for the computer industry. His man was reluctant until Jobs said urgently, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life making fizzy sugar water or do you want to change the world?" So it is Christ calling us with our skills from the easy chair and television remote to come change our world and eternity.

Conclusion

Yes, it is a big world. And the needs are immense! We ourselves are so frail. Ah, but our Christ is able! Won't you give Christ your supper?

Suggested Prayer: Lord, here am I! And here is mine. In Jesus. Amen.