When you read a similar story, do you tend to skim it? It’s embarrassing for me to admit, but I do sometimes when I am reading my Bible.
I should never get bored of reading about Jesus doing miracles. Yet my nature, being what it is, at times results in me subconsciously drifting through a text because “I already know it”.
It’s like I am saying, “Oh, this is Jesus just feeding more people, or healing another sick person.” It is more than disconcerting to admit this behavior, but if you are person who reads the Bible regularly, does this ever happen to you?
Why bring this up? I’ll get to that in a moment. For now, let’s not skip Jesus feeding 4,000 people—because it is amazing!
I want to run a little thought exercise. If you could have been present at the creation of the universe, standing with God, what would that have been like? Hard to imagine. Yet you would have witnessed matter coming into being from nothing.
Great thinkers of the ages have wrestled with the idea. They refer to the idea in Latin, ex nihilo.
Yet, this passage lets us skip ancient arguments and simply look at Jesus.
In Mark 6:30-44 Jesus fed 5,000 plus. I reflected on it here noting Jesus wasn’t showing-off, he was operating out of his compassion.
In this reflection I want to hover on Jesus creating food ex nihilo. What does the passage tell us about Jesus?
It tells us He is God. John’s Gospel in 1:3 declares, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
Jesus is God. God in the flesh. God in the flesh walking around on the earth he created.
The best analogy I have (and it falls woefully short) is that it is like the designer of a high-performance racecar, making every part from scratch, then after completely assembling the car, taking it onto the track. Don’t you think, when he was driving it, he would completely know the car, know all that it could do, and then manipulate it as he like?
It is a paltry analogy. The Universe is wildly more complex and wildly more fine-tuned. And in my analogy, the racecar genius hasn’t created the material ex nihilo.
The Creator of our universe can easily manipulate his creation as He wills. This is what we are reading of today. Which is why when we read of Jesus, God, standing on earth and creating food, the text should take our breath away.
Yet, returning to my earlier confession, it at times does not. Why?
Perhaps as drivers of God’s racecar, we have become impressed with all humanity has accomplished.
We think we are grand prix drivers of the universe. However, in this finely tuned expanse, we are children who’ve been given the keys.
Amid all our human accomplishments we forget that God is far beyond this world, that we should always be in awe of Him—and perpetually thankful that He left his glory to come and rescue us.
Could it be that because of our familiarity with Jesus (He is so approachable) and with all the advancements in understanding the natural world, our subconscious minds skip over, skim, these grand moments of Jesus in action?
There is an anecdote. Something we can do to maintain our wonder of God. We can worship God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Might you right now worship God, worship Him He has lost His Wonder. You might pray Psalm 8, Psalm 95:1-6, or Psalm 97.