GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 8-1
Ample Provision
Recently, I drove down a busy highway and passed two cars that were pulled to the side of the road. Two people were pouring gasoline into the first car from a five-gallon container. I don’t think that ever happened to my mom and dad, because my mother began looking for a service station once the gas gauge reached the half-full mark.
On January 25, 1990, Avianca Flight 052, a regularly scheduled flight from Bogotá, Colombia, to New York City via Medellín, Colombia, failed to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The air traffic controllers had the plane make another circular flight in order to have a better approach—not an unusual procedure. However, the plane was running low on fuel, a condition that the flight crew failed to communicate to the controllers. On the circular flight, the plane exhausted its fuel, the engines flamed out, and it crashed on Long Island.
In the final days of World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered his army to make a massive push against Allied lines. The German tanks pushed back Allied forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, creating a “bulge” in the Allied lines. Using this figure, writers began referring to this as “The Battle of the Bulge.” However, the German tanks began to run out of fuel, halting their advance and contributing to the failure of Hitler’s last major Western offensive.
As Jesus and his disciples traveled from the north through the Decapolis region, his ministry attracted a crowd of over 4,000 people. For three days they traveled with Jesus until they began to exhaust their supply of food—a condition of which Jesus became aware: “I have compassion on the crowd, because now three days they have stayed with me, and they have nothing to eat.” (Mark 8:2) The words in Mark’s narrative suggest that the people took food with them when they went to see Jesus, but over the three days, they had exhausted their supplies.
In another instance, Jesus said to a large crowd of followers, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?” (Luke 14:28) In this instance, Jesus was talking about the cost of discipleship, but the principle ensuring ample provisions still seems to apply. It’s important to have enough gasoline to complete the journey, enough fuel to land a plane, and ample spiritual strength to continue the walk with Christ.
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