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Overcoming Fear       

 

 That None Be Lost

 

Once there was a multitude who was far from home and hungry. Jesus' disciples would have sent them away but Jesus told them to feed these people. There was a boy who was willing to give up his lunch that day. He had five loaves and two fish. Jesus gave thanks for the lunch and gave it to his disciples and told them to give the multitude ‘as much as they would’….as much as the people wanted and as much as the disciples would give out.

 

After all had eaten and were full, Jesus told his disciples to “gather up the fragments that remain" so that nothing was lost. They gathered twelve baskets that day. There is a superabundance in our God, but I saw something else in this passage. I saw the “fragments”.

 

Fragments are pieces of a larger whole that have been broken and scattered. They cannot stand alone and are usually swept up and thrown away with the garbage.

 

What if we, as Christians who have tasted of the Bread of Life, gathered what remained? What if we gathered the broken pieces, the halt, maimed, lame, blind, deaf, bruised, hopeless and lost? What if we told them there was a place for them to belong, to fit in?

 

The word “mosaic” relates to Moses and the law that he brought down the mountain from God. Jesus said that he did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it. He also said that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments…To love the Lord with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is not time to send people away, but it is time to gather them. They have a place in the body of Christ even if they are broken. Broken pieces make beautiful mosaics. Mosaics are made by placing colored pieces of stone, glass or jewels together until they make a complete picture.

 

I am reminded of scripture in Malachi that says…Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels…

 

Jesus is making up his jewels as we gather them one by one…piece by piece.

 

If they ‘remain’…if they are still here…THEY CAN BE GATHERED.

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