When I started out on my journey for my spiritual retreat I had a car with a full tank of gas. As I traveled the gas in the tank went down. When I arrived at my destination the tank was nearly empty. This is the law of the conservation of energy. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only change form. I had changed the potential energy in the tank into a mechanical action producing velocity and motion and ending in distance.
Because of this physical law many find it difficult to believe some of the stories in the Bible like the feeding of the multitude. In two separate stories Jesus takes a couple loaves of bread and a few fish and feeds thousands of people with them. This just isn’t physically possible so it has to be just a fable. Skeptics offer any number of ideas how this actually happened naturally and miraculously.
Yet, with God all things are possible. God does not go about breaking the rules he has put in place for the world willy-nilly but there are two things to which the law of the conservation of energy does not apply. These are mercy and love. Like the loaves and fishes love and mercy can start out seemingly small and will continue to grow to satisfy the need of every person. But how?
Love and mercy both flow from the very nature of God who is infinite, therefore, like God, love and mercy are also infinite. If you continually draw water from a well the well will eventually run dry. It does not matter how much you draw from the well of love and mercy for they are infinitely full. The amount of love and mercy available never diminishes even a drop.
The people were with Jesus for three days and had no food. They were hungry and he was concerned that they would not be able to make the journey home if he did not feed them. The loaves and fishes were not simply physical food for them. It was an extension of his love and mercy. There would have been enough to eat for the entire world had they been present at the time.
For love and mercy to multiply it has to be freely passed on. The multitude would not have been fed if the first people who received the basket with the food had kept it for themselves. They would have their fill but the rest of the people would go hungry. Love and mercy can only grow if you take what you have been given and pass it on to another. You will receive love and mercy from God in the same measure as you give love and mercy to another. If you wish to received God’s love in its fullest you need to love to your fullest. As you give away your love and mercy to another, God will replenish that love and mercy within you from his infinite well and increase your capacity to love and be merciful.
Love fully, forgive freely, grant mercy to those who neither request nor deserve it. In doing so you will be like God and he will find favor with you. You will find the more you give the more you will have to give but the more you try to save for yourself the more you desire to have even more to the point that there is never enough. The only thing that grows when you save what you have been given is your hunger.
