As a child I liked taking things apart, looking at how it worked, them putting it back together. Mostly they worked after the process, but I do remember some which didn’t survive, ending up as a pile of miscellaneous parts which ended up in the bin. Mostly I dismantled items that were on the way out, or that I salvaged from the bin, but there were a few exceptions.

Later on in life, I remember some power tools which got the same process. I tended to only be able to afford the budget range and sometimes the build quality wasn’t great. So things like cutting guides that weren’t quite at 90 degrees got the same treatment. I’d take it apart, make a few modifications and put it back together. It meant that projects might have taken a bit longer than originally expected.

We live in a world that demands results immediately, or at least has some sort of deadline that a project is expected to meet. It seems like the days are gone where something is finished when it is finished.

The idea of working seems to be to put something in the bank. Most of us have Contracts of Work, that say how we are going to work and how much we are to be paid. It leads to a kind of life where we have so many obligations.

In Mark 7 we see Jesus coming to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and hosts of people coming to hear him. The narrative continues in chapter 8 with Jesus concerned about their welfare as they had nothing to eat as they had been with Jesus for three days.

Would we have left all to go the follow Jesus? Do we rely on him to provide us with what we need?

Jesus asked the disciples how much food they had with them. They replied that they had seven loaves left (v5). So Jesus took those loaves, gave thanks and broke them, giving them to the disciples to distribute to the people. He also took some small fishes, blessed those and commanded the disciples to hand them out as well.

I remember a discussion with my dad about this. We were talking of the mechanics of how this could have been achieved. I didn’t think the disciples gave everyone a tiny crumb and that was enough to fill them up, as this wouldn’t explain the left-overs. I wondered if each time the disciples broke the loaf, that it expanded and became two complete loaves.

All the people ate and the disciples took up seven baskets of the left-overs. We’re not told what happened to those. Perhaps they were given out to people to eat on their journey home, or perhaps the disciples took them with them back into the boat to hand out elsewhere. But what is interesting is that they were gathered up, nothing was lost. I would have expected some of those people to have put some in their pockets for another day, but it doesn’t look like this was the case. Perhaps it’s the culture that they lived in, and that ‘doggy-bags’ were considered rude.

We can easily see the parable here, that nothing was lost or wasted, but what is the purpose of having bags of crumbs? Unless the miracle didn’t stop here and they became full loaves again.

After the people left, Jesus and the disciples sailed to Dalmanutha. It looks like they didn’t stay long and the disciples forgot to buy any bread there. They got back into the boat and set off again. When Jesus started talking about leaven they assumed it was because they had no bread.

Yet in the boat there was one loaf. We’re not told where this loaf came from. It may have been kept from the seven bags of left-overs (that had re-grown back into a complete loaf). It might have been there all the time. It may have just appeared.

With God, nothing is impossible.

When we come to remember Jesus in the bread and wine, we remember the broken body, but we also remember how it was brought back to life by God himself. Not as a frail, moral body, but as perfect and immortal.

So not like rebuilding a broken or poorly built tool, where it can still break again in the future, but creating something which will last forever.

That is something that God says can happen to us as well. We can be made perfect and complete, but only through Jesus Christ.