GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 8:6
The Divine Supply
Alice does most of the preparation of our meals, but sometimes I enjoy cooking. However, we also like letting someone else cook—i.e., by eating out. There’s the restaurant where one orders from a menu, and the server brings only the ordered food. The other restaurant we visit is the buffet. The problem with a buffet, for me, is that I feel I need to eat enough to justify the charge. Too often, this means going beyond satisfaction to surfeiting. (I like that word better than gluttony.) If I could just stop at the point of satisfaction, I’d be better off. A few decades ago, we went to a buffet where the food was on a conveyor that rotated through the kitchen. I overate to the point of pain, far beyond satisfaction.
In Mark’s account of Jesus and his disciples feeding a large crowd, he wrote, “And he directed the crowd to sit on the ground. And after he took the loaves and gave thanks, he broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples so that they might set them before them, and they distributed the loaves to the crowd.” (Mark 8:6) According to the wording of this verse, after Jesus took the bread and gave thanks, he broke the loaves and “kept giving to the disciples.” The word Mark used here (ἐδίδου < δίδωμι, to give) is in the imperfect tense, implying a continuous act. Thus, as Jesus broke the loaves, he “kept giving to the disciples.” So, the multiplication of the seven loaves did not take place in the hands of the disciples but in the hands of Jesus. One lesson here is that, where the human supply ends, the divine supply takes over.
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