IT ALL ADDS UP

Years ago I remember hearing a talk by a New Testament professor on the Feeding of the 5000 in John’s Gospel. He made an interesting point when he said, "Five plus two doesn't equal 5000," he said. Five loaves of bread and two fish, lunch for a little boy, more like five biscuits and a can of tuna fish, just does not make lunch for 5000 people. But it did when one more ingredient was added to the mix: Jesus. Five plus two does not equal 5000, but five plus two plus One does. And that One is the vital ingredient.

           

That One is the vital ingredient into any recipe for our Christian life and Christian way of living. In marriage it always takes three to make the marriage work: husband, wife, God. Take one of those ingredients away, and there is no marriage and there is no real possibility for the love that makes the marriage work and holds it together to thrive and flourish. In marriage one plus one does not equal two but one plus one plus One does.

           

And so it is with any relationship we have as Christians, with anything we do as Christians. For when we discover that there is a problem in a relationship, when we discover there is a problem in our lives, whatever the problem, my suspicion is that when we get to the root and heart of the matter, we probably have left God out of the mix. That's why everything seems all mixed up. It takes God to make the mix, make the recipe, come out right. When we add God in, it all adds up.

           

What happens, I think, if I can use myself as an example and assume that you are no different than I, is that I (we) do not consciously leave God out of the mix. We just don't, all too often, deliberately put God into the mix at the beginning. We just get so involved in the relationship, so involved with what we are doing, that we do not realize that we need that One more ingredient to make the recipe work. Then when we find ourselves in a mess, we wonder what went wrong.

           

The good part about all this, however, is that it is never too late to add God back into the mix. Life is not like making a batch of bread. We can't put the yeast in after we've baked the bread. But we can always put the Yeast we call God back into the Bread we call Our Life and we will rise to what God wants us to be. God is always there hoping that we will add Him to the mix but never forcing Himself on to or into us. That is not the way God works.

           

During his entire ministry Jesus never forced himself into any situation: people reached out to him and asked him to become part of the mix. Yes, he called people to follow him, but he never forced them to respond. When the Apostles discovered that there were not enough resources to feed 5000 people, when they discovered that five plus two did not equal 5000, they were at a loss as to what to do. But when Jesus was added to the situation, it all added up, as it always does.

We need to remind ourselves to add Jesus, add God, to every mix before we toss them into the mixing bowl and not after we put the recipe into the oven. We'll save ourselves a whole lot of misery and grief if we do and be a whole lot happier as well.