I woke up in the middle of the night this week with an incredibly clear thought: fishes and loaves.
Let me back up. My sweet 13 year old daughter was featured on NBC Nightly News last Wednesday. An hour after it aired, I was on the phone with the manager of Shop Athens Ohio, the store where Jordan sells her handmade coffee cup sleeves.
“I think we’ve been hacked,” the manager said. “We are being totally inundated with orders for Jordan’s products.”
Oops. I had forgotten to give her a heads up that Jordan’s “Cozys for the Cure” creations were going to be seen on national television.
Within 2 days, we had gotten orders for 700 coffee cup sleeves plus dozens of bowl cozys.
Jordan makes each one by hand. They take her about 7 minutes each. She has two weeks to get them all done. My math stinks, but I think if she worked on them an hour a day, it would take her 81 days to finish.
I toss and turn at night wrestling with other concerns like, Walmart has just stopped carrying the special buttons she uses. Where are we going to get 700 buttons? We don’t have enough fabric. She still has to go to school every day. I don’t know how to sew.
Can you feel my anxiety rising?
So that was my state of mind in the wee small hours Sunday morning when I woke with one clear thought: fishes and loaves.
Four different times in the Bible, we are told that Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish and fed 5000 men, plus women and children.
He took the little bit that one boy in the crowd had to offer and he multiplied it to the point that there were 12 baskets of leftovers!
But before he did that, Jesus talked with his disciples. They were adamant that this was an impossible situation.
“But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” they answered. -Matthew 14:17 (NLT)
How often do I say that to God? But I only have…
I chose that as today’s memory verse, because it reflects my own thinking. Maybe it reflects your thinking too.
It never feels like we have quite enough, right?
And yet, God proves again and again that He can take our little and make it much, not because of who we are or how hard we work, but because of who He is.
Every time I walk through the kitchen and see Jordan’s sewing machine or a pile of half-finished cozys, I now think, “Fishes and loaves.”
I don’t know how it will get done, but it will. And we will have God to thank.
P.S. I’d also like to thank Andrea Coombs, Blow’s Sew & Vac, Jordan’s Cozy Tribe in Fargo, Teresa & Dave South, Kathy Hartman and her quilting group, Rachael Blatt, Leslie Zalecki from Designer Window Treatments, and Janome who have quickly come to our rescue. We’re not nearly done yet, but you are all proving that many hands make light work. We are so grateful for your encouragement.