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Have you ever felt that you failed to receive the recognition you were due? I don’t refer to lavish laud and praise so much so as I do the simple acknowledgment of your capabilities. There are times when such recognition seems vital to our sense of self esteem. In the case of whether we ourselves so recognize another, failure to do so may render us just as guilty as we had thought another to be for the same offense.
However, that offense becomes great indeed if it’s the Lord to Whom we fail to extend due recognition. Such a failure manifests a weakness in our faith or a total lack thereof, and makes us to appear unappreciative of all the input the Lord has daily in our lives.
At John chapter six, there were about five thousand people who had gathered to hear the things Jesus would say and witness the things He would perform. The Lord knew that He was miraculously able to provide for these people so that they could eat, but asked Philip how such provisions might be made. This was an opportunity for Philip to demonstrate whether he believed Jesus could perform the miraculous wonder of feeding this multitude with so little on hand. Sadly, Philip simply stated that two hundred pennyworth of bread wouldn’t be enough for everyone to have only a little.
Of course, Jesus fed the multitude anyway, but it certainly would have been wonderful if the miracle could have been performed as fulfillment of the disciples’ expectations instead of as an event that might have caused the disciples themselves to marvel as much as those who had not spent nearly so much time with Christ, and who had not nearly so much opportunity to learn of Him and experience His presence.
What is even sadder still is that Jesus fed another multitude of four thousand over at Matthew fifteen, an event which followed that of John chapter six. Yet, the disciples still manifested no faith or knowledge before the fact of the Lord’s abilities.
Let us pray that we learn quickly the lessons of the Lord’s providence, believing always and forgetting not that every perfect gift is from Him, both here and here-after.