When I was growing up it was the 90s and the recession, and everyone was feeling the pinch. My parents had their own business, and money came in fits and spurts. We all knew not to ask for new clothes or toys and instead save up our birthday money for the CD or tencel jeans. There was no pocket money, in the Reale household.
We weren’t poor – we were a middle-class family in a tight spot. But the experience gave me something important: put simply, I learnt to trust God. God was always spoken of in our family as the one that looked after, the one that provided, and my memory of childhood is not so much the lack of money, but that God made sure we were provided for, again and again and again.
My parents were part of a network of caring and loving friends, and they would all look after each other. One family picked up past-it fruit and vegetables from a grocer and went round delivering them to people’s houses. I remember their van parked on our driveway, and heaving a bounty of sticky grapes or overripe peaches into our kitchen. My parents were on the bread circuit, picking up day-old bread from the local bakery and sharing it around town. And people would slip cash into envelopes and press them into each others’ palms, saying, “I felt to give you this”. Out of what little everybody had, there seemed to be an abundance.
The Gospel reading for this week (in John 6) tells a similar story. It is a story about few resources and many people, and the question, “Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?” Jesus responds by taking what is there (five loaves, two fish), giving thanks to God, then sharing it with a great multitude of people.
The economy we are used to is one of scarcity. We ask, “What can we possibly do with these few resources?” But God’s economy is different. God replies with, “Share what you have…and trust me”. And what flows is a bounty beyond what anyone could imagine.
Words by Rev Andreana
Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash
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