I have recently subscribed to WordLive, a ministry of Scripture Union. Yesterday's offering (26 February) included this insight into St. John's story [6:1-15] of the Feeding of the Five Thousand:
‘What can we give them to eat?’ With five thousand visitors, Jesus puts that question to his disciples.
He has two different answers:
• Philip is entirely realistic – we don’t have the money to feed them!
• Andrew is entirely unrealistic – can we do anything with this lad’s lunch?
Drawing on yesterday's blog, Philip's is a centripetal spirituality, and Andrew's a centrifugal spirituality. But to be fair, after venturing "this lad's lunch," even Andrew fell back to a centripetal spirituality.
So Jesus goes to work centrifugally, with the result that he needs to ask the disciples to "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.
In the same way, Jesus' heart's desire is to gather us up, too, so that none of us may be lost.
Comments