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The Ministry of Healing
be clothed? ... for your heavenly Father knoweth that
ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you.”
Matthew 6:31-33
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in by poverty; but His word is pledged that their need shall be
supplied, and He has promised that which is better than earthly
good—the abiding comfort of His own presence.
After the multitude had been fed, there was an abundance of
food left. Jesus bade His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that
remain, that nothing be lost.”
John 6:12
. These words meant more
than putting the food into baskets. The lesson was twofold. Nothing
is to be wasted. We are to let slip no temporal advantage. We should
neglect nothing that would serve to benefit a human being. Let
everything be gathered up that will relieve the necessities of earth’s
hungry ones. With the same carefulness are we to treasure the bread
from heaven to satisfy the needs of the soul. By every word of God
we are to live. Nothing that God has spoken is to be lost. Not one
word that concerns our eternal salvation are we to neglect. Not one
word is to fall useless to the ground.
The miracle of the loaves teaches dependence upon God. When
Christ fed the five thousand, the food was not nigh at hand. Appar-
ently He had no means at His command. There He was, with five
thousand men, besides women and children, in the wilderness. He
had not invited the multitude to follow Him thither. Eager to be in
His presence, they had come without invitation or command; but He
knew that after listening all day to His instruction they were hungry
and faint. They were far from home, and the night was at hand.
Many of them were without means to purchase food. He who for
their sake had fasted forty days in the wilderness, would not suffer
them to return fasting to their homes.
The providence of God had placed Jesus where He was, and He
depended on His heavenly Father for means to relieve the necessity.
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When we are brought into strait places, we are to depend on God.
In every emergency we are to seek help from Him who has infinite
resources at His command.
In this miracle, Christ received from the Father; He imparted
to the disciples, the disciples to the people, and the people to one