Tuesday after Epiphany

We are in the last week of the Christmas season. Epiphany and the magi have come and gone. Decorations are still up in our homes. Hopefully we still hold the joy of Christmas in our hearts.

But I think in reality most of us have moved on. We have welcomed a new year and started a new year with new resolutions and commitments to others and ourselves. Christmas seems to have been a long time ago… last year even.

 

But Jesus in our Gospel is already on mission and feeding the 5000. A miracle we hear and wonder if we too can experience some of his miraculous intervention into our life and help us. It’s a wonderful recounting of feeding so many with so little. And maybe that is more important for us to remember today.

 

God has blessed us all with so much already. Most of us have homes and work and reasonable health. We have been blessed with faith and striving for a relationship with God…or we certainly wouldn’t be reading a deacon’s reflection today.

 

We are blessed. We are not forgotten.

What are we doing with what we have been given?

 

To be blessed with enough food and enough shelter and work to sustain us we are now expected to do something with it.

 

But maybe we see our blessings as  not enough to do much with. We tell ourselves, “It’s not reasonable to think we can do much to feed others, spiritually or physically or even have time for others.”

 

But that’s exactly what the disciples said too. They didn’t see that with only a fragment of blessing we can do great things with Jesus guiding us.

 

Today let us ask ourselves, have we used what we have been given to multiply the blessings in the kingdom?

 

Have we taken our little faith and told someone we love or work with about Jesus?

Have we given some of our food and clothing to those with less?

Have we showed others they are loved this season? It’s the best time to do so because this season is a time many are alone and desperately need a call or kind word from us. Even strangers at the grocery store or gas station. Maybe shock then all with a Merry Christmas !

And invoke the spirit of the season.

 

God has given all of us so much love. Let’s see how much bigger we can grow it today by spreading it around.

 

Merry Christmas!