SURPRISE!

Jesus is full of surprises.

In the Gospel of John, 6:1-14, Jesus takes 5 small loaves of bread and 2 fish, offered to him by a young boy, and in giving thanks to his Father in heaven, he "multiplies" it. When everyone's bellies were full, after lunch, the disciples gather up the leftovers and fill 12 baskets.

They went from 5 loaves and 2 fish to having 12 baskets left over. It was a miracle. So miraculous it was, that all 4 Gospels retell the story. Not many miracles get that kind of press.

As a child I often wondered how the illusion worked, what actually took place. Did Jesus sprinkle magic dust over the meager lunch and POOF! it all multiplied magically?! None of the Gospels describe the process - either they don't care to tell us how he did it, or they don't know. Surely someone must have seen it. If not, that means that every head was dutifully bowed and every eye was reverently closed. I doubt that - I still look around during prayer sometimes.

So where did all that food come from? Maybe Jesus did wave his hands over the baskets and create it out of thin air. I believe God has the power to do that if God so chooses.

But I also have to wonder if the little boy was the only person who was mindful enough of the time of day to carry his lunch with him. There were no drive-thru lanes back then, they didn't have hot dog vendors parading through the crowd, and Luncheables were not available for purchase. In their time, a significant portion of each day was spent preparing meals. They would likely not have ventured away for a day to hear Jesus, without bringing something along with them. So, surely others saw the little boy's willingness to go hungry to offer his meal for the Rabbi from Nazareth, and were moved to share their lunch too.

Isn't it also a miracle for Jesus simply to begin practicing what it means to share and have 5,000 strangers follow suit? We aren't told he was preaching about sharing. He didn't command them to share or try to guilt them into it. He takes a meager lunch, offers his gratitude for it to God, and begins to share it with others.

The results are the same either way. God was given thanks for the gift of daily bread, everyone eats till they are full, and the leftovers carry on for days. Either way he does it, the results are surprising.

Jesus is full of surprises.

In these early months of the adoption journey, we are busy raising funds to meet our $20,000 goal. We have known from the beginning that we would be depending upon our hard work AND the generosity of friends and family to help us reach it. Kameron will have made over 40 pound cakes this time next week, and we will debut another fundraiser in August. We have also mailed 100 letters to friends and family, of all stations in life, asking them to pray for our family and the child who will join it and to consider including a gift to help us with the costs. Our friends have responded. As of today, we broke the $5,000 mark - thanks be to God!

As I have written previously, we are very humbled at the overwhelming support we have received through emails, calls, gifts, texts, prayers and smiles. Frankly, we expected that our families would be supportive. We expected that our close friends would too.

But what has surprised us is how people have felt led to support this effort - even when we have not directly asked them for it. In fact, some people we have no met before have come forward to share an encouraging word or even make a contribution. Neither Kameron nor I could ever have guessed the ways that God would bless us and our yet unidentified child with people who desire to be a part of this story. While we are grateful for every expression of support, it renews our faith in a providential God each and every time one of these surprising gracious acts comes along.

I suppose we could have raised all this money just by taking on extra jobs, cutting expenses more than we have, taking adoption loans out and giving ourselves more time. That strategy could be surprising and inspiring to some people and God would be honored by that.

But instead, our desire to adopt has coincided with a calling to step out on faith and depend in part upon the goodness of God at work in the hearts of our social community. The result of God's collective cooperative work speaks for itself. How can we say how grateful we are for what God is doing? Each day is surely a wonderful surprise.

We deeply desire to show God’s love to one of His own by making him or her one of our own. Please be in prayer for all five of us during this journey.

In God’s grace,
Nathan, Kameron, J. Henry & Amelia (and Baby Number Three!)