Ahh, the Buffet

It’s the all-you-can-eat buffet. Eyes bigger than your stomach, you load up a plate and gorge, consuming substantially more food than you need.

Is it true hunger that drives you? Not likely, because most of us haven’t missed a meal lately.

Is it the need to “get my money’s worth” from the restaurant? That’s not likely either, because if you can afford to eat out you probably don’t truly worry about money.

So what drives us to gorge? Perhaps it’s that at our most basic level of belief there is a fear that there won’t be “enough.”

In Matthew 14 is the account of one of Jesus’ better known miracles – the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist had been executed, so Jesus withdrew to a deserted place, only to have 5,000 or so people follow him for his teachings. It is near dinner time at the end of a long day and the disciples urge Jesus to send everyone home since they are all getting hungry. But Jesus says no, “you feed them.”

The disciples inform Jesus there’s not near enough food to feed the crowd, only five loaves of bread and two fish. I can almost hear Jesus sigh with exasperation and say, “Bring it to me.” You know how the story ends.

Why is this an answer to why we gorge at buffets? Because we see the world the same way that those disciples saw those fish po-boys – from a view of scarcity. We say, “there just isn’t enough.” Jesus says instead, “There’s always room for one more at the table.” God’s provision was more than the people needed to be fed.

Scarcity versus abundance.

It’s a choice that shapes our interactions with the world. A scarcity view causes us to hoard and possess to the exclusion of others’ well-being. An abundance view helps us to be generous and kind with our lives and resources.

We Christians are children of the Father who not only created and “owns” everything in the cosmos, but also freely gives us all that we need. So when God calls us to feed the world our response shouldn’t be “we only have these loaves and fishes” but “with God, we can do that.” Let’s live together out of the view that God is “enough” for all our needs and concerns. He fed 5,000 but it could have just as easily been 5,000,000. That’s the way our God rolls.

Abundantly yours,
Pastor Gary