Education is another major problem in our country. Increasingly, students in large urban areas receive an education that pales in comparison to that received by students in wealthier suburbs. There's more action here than on Social Security, but often the efforts bear little fruit as vicious cycles of poverty, gangs, drug abuse, and more seem to thwart many of the best laid plans.
It is easy to see the scale of some of the problems facing us and throw up our hands saying, "What can we do about problems so big?"
I suspect that the disciples must have felt much the same when Jesus looks out at a crowd of thousands and says to his little band of followers, "You give them something to eat." Luke tells us there were 5000 men, which presumably means thousands more women and children. And the disciples have five loves and two fish.
When we celebrate the Lord's Supper in worship, we tear pieces of bread off a loaf for each worshiper. A good size loaf will give one bite of bread to about 150 people. You do the math. The disciples are going to be cutting bread into incredibly tiny pieces.
I wonder what the disciples thought and felt as they headed out into that crowd of perhaps 10,000 with less than a single grocery bag of food. This is one of the New Testament "miracle stories," but I think the first miracle is that the disciples even tried. Surely they thought about responding, "You have got to be kidding, Jesus. That'll never work." But for some reason, they took a few handfuls of food and waded out into a sea of people.
But we're a long way removed from Jesus, and we don't much believe in miracles. Very often I've heard church discussions that sound a bit like, "We've only got a small bit of food. It's not enough to do much with. We'll just eat it ourselves."
I wonder what it would take to enable me to head out into a hungry crowd with a single loaf of bread and yell, "Come and get it?"
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