Should We Expect Miracles: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 8:1-10)

Are you scared to ask for miracles?  I find myself scared.  It is as if my faith is on the line to do so and I don’t want to be denounced or disappointed.  I need the lesson of a second miraculous feeding of a great multitude.

In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha. (Mark 8:1-10, ESV) 

It seems strange that the disciples do not mention or seem to remember that Jesus fed the 5,000 not long before and thus do not expect him to do so here.  But as the ESV Study Bible note says, “The disciples probably remember Jesus’ previous miracle of feeding the 5,000, however, they are constantly captive to their own very limited frame of reference.”

And don’t we know this to be true of us.  We’ve seen a miracle from God but yet we don’t expect it to be repeated.  We are scared to believe that God would do it again.  What if He doesn’t come through this time?  How will we look if we depend on Him for something miraculous and get only something mundane?

The surplus food taken up shows that Jesus is able to do more than we ask or expect (Ephesians 3:20,21).  He can more than meet our needs, or maybe it is better to say, he knows more thoroughly what our needs are and what it would take to meet them and does so luxuriously at times.  His miracle is motivated by compassion.

And so should our miracles be motivated.  When we see someone suffering we should want to alleviate that and be ready to trust God for big ways to alleviate it.  The last thing we should worry about is how we’ll look if God doesn’t perform a miracle.  And perhaps we don’t need to prescribe how the miracle should happen.  God doesn’t do things the same way every time.