Leftovers

in Giggles on February 23, 2021

Well.  I survived SNOVID 2021.

Snopocalypse.

The Winter Vortex.

The Week Hell Froze Over.

Call it what you will, Texas is FINALLY thawed out.

Praise Jesus, my household escaped with the casualty count being limited to outdoor plant life that were too large to be relocated to the garage or living room.  I am thankful beyond words.

After Hurricane Harvey decided to build his summer home over Houston a few years ago, dumping 50+ inches of water, downing power lines, and subsequently drowning our ability to electrically power any homes—we installed a whole home generator…that little guy (big guy) kept us toasty warm when other power sources failed last week.

But…that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about leftovers.

I know a NUMBER of people who simply will not TOUCH leftovers from a meal—NO MATTER how delicious the meal was.

I think that’s weird.

Did you know leftovers do not just apply to food?

I’m gonna try really hard not to get preachy…I know I lose people when that happens…but stay with me, and I’ll make my point…after all I am a Bible teacher.

I was sitting in church a couple of weeks ago, and the sermon was about Jesus feeding the five thousand.  Hang with me for a second for some quick Bible background info:

At this point in the life of Jesus, He has a rockin’ public speaking gig. He’s got twelve guys that go with Him everywhere...and townspeople literally come OUT OF THE WOODWORK to hear Him, and basically just get a glimpse of Him.  Jesus is doing miracles: healing the sick, making the blind see, and the lame walk.  People can’t get enough of Him.

Well, Jesus and His disciples just find out that Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist was beheaded.  The whole team is considerably bummed; they want to go off to a quiet place to be by themselves…but they can’t…because the notoriety of Jesus follows them around like a shadow.

Jesus sees the people, and “had compassion on them” (Mark 6:34 NIV).

Y’all.  There were 5,000 MEN on this hillside, not counting the women and children.  He began to teach them and simply do what He did best…as did His disciples.

It was a L O N G day….so long that the day turned into dinner time, and the disciples urged Jesus to send the people away, so they could get something to eat from neighboring towns and villages.  Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat,” (Mark 6:37, NIV).

Can you even imagine?

Let’s hit the pause button for just a minute.

So, I, like many of my fellow Texans, just spent the last week, holed up in my house with whatever I managed to get ten days ago at the grocery store.  It NEVER occurred to me that I was not going to be able to get out of my house OR once I was able to leave my house, that the grocery store would be OUT OF FOOD.  Needless to say, I have been incredibly creative in the kitchen.

So, put yourself in the place of the disciples, on a REMOTE hillside, staring at the business end of 5,000 hangry men, probably 15-20,000 women and children scattered beyond them—with NOTHING to feed them.

Nothing.

Enter a boy, stage left.

With a lunch from home.

Five loaves, and two fish.

Sure kid.  That’s great.  This is just what we were looking for.

But in reality, it was exactly what they needed.  They took what they had to Jesus, He blessed it, and they started passing it out.

And….EVERYONE ATE…UNTIL THEY WERE FILLED.

And then, the disciples picked up TWELVE BASKETS OF LEFTOVERS.

That’s one basket for each duh-ciple.

I have one more fun fact, then I’ll switch gears….This account…this Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle of Jesus that is recorded in all four Gospels apart from His Resurrection.  Don’t get me wrong, Jesus did scores of miracles, that are listed in great detail, but this one was BIG.  It made an impact.

Now, about those leftovers…

At the beginning of this account, Jesus had just found out His cousin had died, yet He showed great compassion on a great number of people.  Sure, He was Jesus.  But, His disciples weren’t.  They were just guys.

To be honest, I give my leftover energy to my loved ones a lot more than I care to admit.  And, if I’m even MORE honest, I pick up BASKETS full of their leftover love and affection in return.  Leftovers that I’m not worthy of.

I speak to a lot of moms—new moms, seasoned moms, middle moms.  We are PROS at leftovers.  We serve leftovers and we give leftovers…we’re not proud of that, but we run on fumes.  And to be honest, we GET leftovers.  We eat the crust off of sandwiches because our Littles think the crusts are “yucky”.  We sleep on the floor beside a crib when we have a croupy baby.  We walk the floors at night with a new baby who is having trouble adjusting to life on the outside.  And we bolt straight up out of bed because our eight-year-old is psycho staring at us because we’ve got to go fight the monster under the bed.  We do all of these things and more, then run off of the leftover energy to get us through the rest of the day.

Five loaves and two fish.

How much better would we all be, if we took our own meager offerings and handed them over to the One who could actually do something with them?

Here’s hoping your leftovers get you through.