When I started out on my journey for my spiritual retreat I
had a car with a full tank of gas. As I traveled the gas in the tank went down.
When I arrived at my destination the tank was nearly empty. This is the law of
the conservation of energy. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only
change form. I had changed the potential energy in the tank into a mechanical
action producing velocity and motion and ending in distance.
Because of this physical law many find it difficult to
believe some of the stories in the Bible like the feeding of the
multitude. In two separate stories Jesus
takes a couple loaves of bread and a few fish and feeds thousands of people
with them. This just isn’t physically possible so it has to be just a fable.
Skeptics offer any number of ideas how this actually happened naturally and
miraculously.
Yet, with God all things are possible. God does not go about
breaking the rules he has put in place for the world willy-nilly but there are
two things to which the law of the conservation of energy does not apply. These
are mercy and love. Like the loaves and fishes love and mercy can start out
seemingly small and will continue to grow to satisfy the need of every person.
But how?
Love and mercy both flow from the very nature of God who is
infinite, therefore, like God, love and mercy are also infinite. If you
continually draw water from a well the well will eventually run dry. It does
not matter how much you draw from the well of love and mercy for they are
infinitely full. The amount of love and mercy available never diminishes even a
drop.
The people were with Jesus for three days and had no food.
They were hungry and he was concerned that they would not be able to make the
journey home if he did not feed them. The loaves and fishes were not simply
physical food for them. It was an extension of his love and mercy. There would
have been enough to eat for the entire world had they been present at the time.
For love and mercy to multiply it has to be freely passed
on. The multitude would not have been fed if the first people who received the
basket with the food had kept it for themselves. They would have their fill but
the rest of the people would go hungry. Love and mercy can only grow if you
take what you have been given and pass it on to another. You will receive love
and mercy from God in the same measure as you give love and mercy to another.
If you wish to received God’s love in its fullest you need to love to your
fullest. As you give away your love and mercy to another, God will replenish
that love and mercy within you from his infinite well and increase your
capacity to love and be merciful.
Love fully, forgive freely, grant mercy to those who neither
request nor deserve it. In doing so you will be like God and he will find favor
with you. You will find the more you give the more you will have to give but
the more you try to save for yourself the more you desire to have even more to
the point that there is never enough. The only thing that grows when you save
what you have been given is your hunger.
