That Mediocre Lunch

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That you pack for your kid, that hardly counts as enough to nourish a growing body, that looks super lame next to the Super Mom lunches the other kids bring, that you had no intention of being shared with anyone else, just might be the beginning of a miracle.

The real ignored hero of Jesus feeding 5,000 people at one sitting is the boy’s mom (or dad, or grandparent, or whoever) who packed that meager lunch, having no inkling of imagination that it might fill any more than that single belly.

The behind-the-scenes, no-name, no-fame people who simply do the faithful day-in, day-out work of packing kids’ lunches (and all the budgeting, and planning, and shopping, and clean-up that goes into it) are the unsung heroes of the Kingdom of God.

Turns out Jesus doesn’t really need our big dreams or fantastic plans of spreading his ministry. All he needs is our simple faithfulness. Every small, insignificant, humdrum thing we do is potentially a seed of something truly beautiful and life-giving when placed in the hands of Jesus.

In the end, it’s all just loaves and fishes.

Rodger Otero

I'm a husband-father-musician-pastor trying to make a decent contribution to the world. California is the Motherland, North Carolina has my heart, Georgia is Home. These are mostly my riffs on formation, leadership, and being fully human.

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