And they did eat and were all filled, and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets. Luke 9:17
There is never any shortage of food when we sit down to the fellowship meal we have on the last Sunday of each month at the Sussex Gospel Hall. Everybody brings something, and there is more than enough to go around. In fact, when the ladies collect the containers that they brought their food in, there is usually some left over that they take home and presumably feed to their families later. Many a good meal could be made from those leftovers. But I have never yet seen anyone go away from the dinner with more than they came with, unlike the banquet that the Lord Jesus provided to the multitudes in the wilderness. Did you ever wonder what happened to all of those baskets of leftovers?
Because there were twelve baskets of fragments, we generally assume that each of the disciples received one. If so, what did they do with the food? If they followed the pattern of their Lord, they were generous with it. They would surely share it with the people they encountered as they traveled. That is what we are to do when the Lord Jesus blesses us with spiritual and/or temporal abundance. Just as the disciples would be unable to eat all of the food themselves before it went stale, so we need to understand that not everything God has given to us is for ourselves, but is to be shared. Those disciples would also have appreciated being able to share their fragments with the Lord Jesus. That is also the delight of every believer, to be able to share what we have received with the Giver, knowing that it all came from His willingly dispensed abundance.
We are not told, but I think there was somebody else who received some of the leftovers. The generosity of the boy who offered to give his lunch to the Lord Jesus is touching. As he ate his meal that afternoon, the boy would have been thrilled that he had not only been privileged to give, but that he himself had not suffered lack but had plenty to eat. Maybe he was given one or two of the baskets of leftovers – again, we are not told. But if he was, he would have been privileged to share the food with his family, along with the story of where it came from. And what a story! As his parents and his siblings ate of the fragments, he would recount for them the details of his donated lunch being distributed to thousands of people, all of whom were filled. And once again, he would see the bounty of the miracle being spread to others, this time to his own loved ones. Those are the ones that the Lord Jesus wants us to be sharing with today. We care for them in temporal ways, so we ought to make sure our families know about and benefit from what the Lord has done for us.
The Lord has given to us so much more than we could ever expect. May we be willing to share it with others. – Jim MacIntosh