Forgotten

There were seven baskets of leftover bread on the hillside after Jesus fed the four thousand, and Mark tells us that the disciples forgot to take any of it with them when they climbed into the boat and crossed the sea. 

You know, when they went back to ministry as they best knew it, following Jesus around and encountering the crowds and doing their thing. 

And it's at this moment that I realize something so very human about all of us in this story. 

I'll be honest - I hold the disciples to a higher standard. I think they're pretty fortunate. I say things to myself (at least to myself, sometimes out loud) that if I had been a disciple and had had the opportunity to follow Jesus around, listen to Him speak, see Him minister, and be present for all of these amazing things, I would have a much stronger faith than I have now. No way that experience would have been wasted on me. 

Yet, here we are - the disciples are doing something so very common to all of us, something that I would definitely do today. Something that I do do today...and I'm not alone in it. 

They've just seen a miracle. Jesus has blessed, broken, and divided a very small amount of food and fed four thousand men (not to mention women and children), and His provision is so grand that there are leftovers. Not just a few scraps here and there, but seven full baskets of leftovers. That's incredible. 

But then, suddenly, it's time to move on. Jesus tells them it's time to go back to the other side of the sea, back to the ministry, back to the teaching, so the disciples climb into the boat to get on with things, and they leave the seven baskets of bread sitting on the hillside. They forgot to take any of it with them. 

They forgot they might get hungry later. That's a small problem. The bigger problem is that they forgot that God Himself just provided for them. 

Three paragraphs later, they're in the boat grumbling that they don't have any bread with them. 

Even though they still have Jesus. 

How quick are we to forget the things that God has done in our lives? How easy is it for us to go back to life as we knew it, to get back on the hamster wheel, to resume the things we used to be doing, only to discover that we have a great, desperate need for something that Jesus already provided, but we left it on the shore and forgot to bring it with us? 

How often do we leave His provision behind?

Listen, I'm guilty of this. I'm guilty of, for example, going back to fear, hilariously shortly after God has set me free from it. I can feel it in my heart that God has given me both strength and courage, and then, I walk away from that sacred space and go back to the world as I know it, and all of a sudden, I'm afraid again. I'm anxious again. I seem to have forgotten that I literally just watched God set me free from it, just felt Him do it. 

I literally just ate the bread that He blessed and broke and provided to the point that it was overflowing in my life, and then, I left those leftovers - abandoned that abundance - on the hillside on my way back to the life I was living. 

Sound familiar? Is it just me? I don't think it's just me. 

In fact, I know it's not. Because here are the disciples doing exactly the same thing. It's a common problem for all of us, this forgetfulness that we have. These oops moments that we have in our lives where we remember, suddenly, that there was bread. There very recently was bread, bread aplenty, bread overflowing...and we...forgot it. Already. Just like that. 

In the space of just a few paragraphs....