The Boy With Fish and Loaves
Open Your Bible
John 6:1-14, John 6:22-40, 2 Kings 4:42-44, Matthew 5:6
BY Melanie Rainer
On my birthday, my team at work went to lunch. After the burgers and fries, and while I sipped a delicious peanut butter milkshake, they asked me the annual “birthday questions”: What surprised you most this year? What was the hardest part of the year? The best? What did you learn about the Lord this year?
I’ve learned many things about the Lord this year, but when I surveyed the last 365 days, it was encouraging and humbling to see a silver thread, a theme woven throughout the choices and challenges my family had made and experienced in 2019. The thread? His provision. His bountiful, beautiful, magnificent provision. He made a way in every desert (Isaiah 43:19). Every valley had a way out, every mountain had a gentle slope down.
Jesus provides beautifully and bountifully in today’s story about the boy who had five loaves and two fishes. We discover very little about the boy from the text itself, just that he was young (anywhere from a child to a man in his twenties), and that he was likely poor because the bread is described as being made of barley, which was common to the poor. But there’s another interesting detail tucked in there: it was almost Passover (John 6:4)—the Jewish holiday and feast celebrating God’s provision as He delivered His people from Egypt, the manna and quail they feasted on in the desert, and the promised land they inherited.
Bread is a silver thread running through Scripture, a reminder of God’s provision: manna in the desert (Exodus 16), Elisha’s miracle (2 Kings 4), and the provision of wheat for Ruth (Ruth 2). This event with the boy’s bread and fish took place shortly before Passover, and afterward, Jesus taught that He was the bread of life, sent from heaven (John 6:35). “This is the work of God,” Jesus said, “that you believe in the one he has sent” (v.29).
A few chapters later, during Passover, Jesus and His disciples broke bread together (John 13). While John doesn’t record the conversation where Jesus blesses the bread and the wine and institutes the Lord’s supper, the other three Gospels do. Jesus, who had a short time before taught His disciples that He is the very bread of life, now broke a loaf, blessed it, and shared it with them.
And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them,
and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
After He is risen, He provides again through bread. He walks the Emmaus Road with two disciples, who do not recognize Him, and they invite Him to stay with them that night. And “it was as he reclined at the table with them that he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24:30–31). The disciples race to Jerusalem to find the rest of the disciples, describing “how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (v.35).
How many times throughout Scripture has God made Himself known through the breaking of bread? The Israelites, wandering through the desert with more manna than they could eat. Widowed Ruth’s overflowing baskets of wheat. Elisha’s miracle. A poor boy and his five loaves, multiplied to feed thousands.
Jesus is the bread of life, and He died on the cross in the ultimate act of bountiful and beautiful provision. And we, the communion of saints, have the privilege of sharing in that bread every time we partake in the Lord’s Supper. May Christ, our bread of life, always be made known through the breaking of the bread, the sign of God’s abundant provision to His people, throughout history and today.
56 thoughts on "The Boy With Fish and Loaves"
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My husband is a fan of soft white bread, I like the dense kind with seeds and nuts. He likes to slather on the jelly, I cover mine with pure butter.
Bread and water make me think of a prisoner’s rations. Just the bare minimum to sustain life. And yet, with our God, it is exactly the opposite.
Jesus is the Bread of Life. He sustains eternally. He fills and fulfills exactly as needed. Whether in the soft white slathered in jelly moments, or dense sprouted grains pressed into with butter – He is exactly what we need.
He is the Bread, torn apart and broken, to mend the heart of our lost souls. He is the Living Water quenching our thirsty, parched souls for eternity.
The Bread of Life and Living Water are not prisoner’s rations…they are the feast of a child of the King. They are our banquet table, in Jesus Christ.
We are blessed!
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Kirstyn,
I am so sorry for your loss. May Jesus keep holding you and your family as close as He has been.❤❤
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Kristyn W. one of the writers for SRT, Maria Furlough, has also lost a child, I believe in a similar way. She has a website and newsletters you might be interested in. I’ll be praying for you. I’ve lost a child but not in that way, my son was 18 years old when he died.
On a brighter note, happy birthday Nora. May God grant you many more and keep you healthy. -
Praying for you and your family Kirstyn.
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What struck me today was the repetition of “leftovers” in John 6:13 and 2 Kings 4:43-44.
Jesus provides us with everything we need and THEN he still provides us with some wonderful extras like love, joy, and happiness on top of everything he provides already. His love is amazing ❤️
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Kirstyn Wright, I, too, have six children ( all grown) and never experienced the loss of a child. But my oldest son and daughter-in-law lost a baby years ago. She too had to go to the hospital to deliver her baby. I sat in the waiting room for hours and prayed. After it was over, I drove home in the wee hours. The song “Fly to Jesus” was on in the car radio, and when I got home, the Lord inspired me to write this poem (I am not a poet), which He has used to comfort other moms. Praying for you and your sweet family. “For My Grandchild”
August 19, 2004
By
Grammy PamSweet, sweet Baby, fly to Jesus
As He whisks you from this earth.
Times of life all interwoven:
Time of death and time of birth.Never knowing life’s sad struggles,
Only mommy’s warmest shroud.
Jesus came and gently took you
Far above the longing crowd.We are sad, but you are happy,
Cuddled in His loving care,
Evermore to be with Jesus,
Waiting for your family there. -
I never realized there were so many reference in such a short area of the Bible to Jesus being the “Bread of Life”. I had to highlight them. I remember so well the story of the fishes and the loaves but the other part of the scripture in John I don’t remember hearing much. I am so glad it was covered and put in the devotion. Melanie does such a good job in today’s devotion talking about Jesus and “Bread of Life”, she makes me want to shout it from the mountain tops — but in Kansas there are no mountains (LOL). God thank you for sending Your Son, the Bread of Life and having Him lay down His life so I/we may have eternal life. Amen.
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KIRSTYN WRIGHT: I pray with others that the Lord be near and a great comfort to you and your family in this time of deep loss. And I also am so grateful to the Lord for the faith you’ve expressed in his faithfulness in the midst of what can bring confusion and doubt. I pray he continues to sustain and grow this good faith he has already given you!
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