The invitation to sit down

“Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place, so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.” John 6:10-11

Having grown up attending Sunday School, I can recall the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 through my memory of a flannelgraph—with little felt-fabric people, a boy, his lunch basket, five loaves of bread, and two fish. No matter how we learned this story, we can likely agree it is one of Jesus’ most famous miracles, and I’m learning there are inexhaustible truths to be discovered the more I study it.

Most notably, there is the young boy who gave what he had to Jesus—an invitation to us to surrender what we have to Jesus for him to take and bless. And there are the disciples who served as agents in bringing the boy’s food to Jesus—an invitation to us to serve as agents of the Kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven. In recently reflecting on this story, however, I was struck by something I had never noticed before. As Jesus prepares to perform this miracle, he instructs his disciples to have the crowd sit down.

Sit down.

Jesus needed the people to simply sit down. To wait. There was nothing more the crowd could or needed to do in that moment other than to sit down. I believe this is another beautiful invitation presented to us through this story, because sometimes all we can or need to do in a situation is simply sit down and watch the miracle unfold before us—watch Jesus do what Jesus does: provide in ways we cannot even imagine.

~em

Photo Credit: Rolando Yera on Unsplash