Jesus’ famous miracle of feeding 5,000 families with five loaves and two fish is the only miracle that all four gospel books record. A second miraculous feeding, 4,000 families with seven loaves and a few small fish, is also recorded in two gospels. Why are these two miracles given such prominence?
Both episodes show us a God of plenty who feeds the hungry. We get to see the compassion of God in Jesus’ concern for the hungry crowd. The disciples would have sent the people away to fend for themselves, but Jesus wouldn’t hear of it. We also see the generosity of God in the huge amounts of leftover food. This wasn’t a dainty lunch! He fed them until they had to push back and say, “Enough! I can’t eat another bite!”
We need these lessons to be pounded into our hearts. Like the disciples, we fret about things that God has already promised to take care of. Like them, we forget what He has recently done for us. Our forgetful fretting distracts us from His bounty and sidetracks us from praising Him for it.