I’m Philip, one of the followers of Jesus; commonly called a disciple. We received the terrible news that John the Baptist, who had been held in prison, in the fortress at Machaerus, had been beheaded at the request of King Herod’s wife.
John was a cousin to Jesus and preached the need for repentance to multitudes of people. Jesus longed for a quiet place to pray and reflect on His Father’s will; but, the crowds followed. So many were sick and in need of spiritual rebirth, that Jesus was moved with compassion for them.
As the day began to slip away, it became apparent that people had not made provision for eating. I suggested that we let the crowd disperse so they could go into the villages and obtain food. I was surprised when Jesus said, to me, “You feed them.” My first thought was how much it would cost to buy food for all these people. We asked among the people what food might be shared and all we could find was a young boy that had five small loaves and two fish. When I told that to Jesus, He said, “Bring them to me.”
Then He instructed us (the disciples) to arrange the people in groups of 50 and have them sit down. When everybody was seated, He took the five loaves and two fish and blessed them and began handing it out to the disciples to distribute to the people. There was enough to feed everybody with plenty left over. [Story is based on the Bible Reference – Matthew 14:13-21]
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