I emailed the web hosting people who checked and found that their DNS was pointing at the wrong server. They have fixed this, and hopefully this page will be coming up for most people in the next little while. Nonetheless, one should do good, with a crowd (ha. Never have one of those) or without.
And reading the word is one of those disciplines I need.
30. The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 35. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36. send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” 37. But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” 38. And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39. Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. 42. And all ate and were filled; 43. and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
45. Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46. After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.
A denarius or penny was a day’s wage for a worker: in today’s money it would be the minimum wage for a day (12:50 an hour or $50 locally). The disciples estimated it would have cost around $10 000 to feed the crowd — and that would be roughly $2 each (they counted the men: there would have been women and children). That gives us a better sense of just how impossible Jesus’ suggestion was.
Now, the original plan was to spend some time alone teaching the disciples, who had just come back from missionary work. That did not happen: indeed the suggestion of the disciples that the crowd go to the villages for food was also impractical as most villages would not have had food spare for a few hundred mouths, let alone a few thousand. It may be (I am speculating) that this was a forced miracle — the feeding was the least bad option.
It did mean that the crowd wanted to follow him for bread, later. Which Jesus corrected: it is the duty of all men to provide for their families. (And the duty of all women to be faithful to that provider, and help provide when needed).
Times are not easy. We need to pray that we will be given the talents and skills to provide for our daily bread, and we need to be thankful for it. We could be living where the youth unemployment is 50%, and the middle-aged also are idle, relying on a shrinking bread dole. But we do not.
So let us plan to do good today, regardless of where our circumstances lead us.