Learning never ends. Is this exciting or discouraging for you? Have you noticed that lessons in life repeat, get learned again and again? One of those, for me, is that I live not by bread alone (and I truly do adore bread—all kinds!), but live by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

It has been a life-long training to open God’s word as soon as I can each day. I have worked at this till it has become a necessity. I have had seasons with little ones and crazy life when one or two verses was my food for the day. Still, in seasons of feast or famine, I have grown increasingly to depend on this daily nourishment.

Naturally, I have read and reread the same passages dozens, hundreds of times. I still learn from them. I eat bread again and again and still enjoy and am nourished by it, too. So bread is a fitting analogy for what brings enjoyment, nutrition, and strength for my body just as God’s word nourishes my heart.

This morning I read about the feeding of the four thousand. I read a chapter from a gospel every day, the same chapter four days in a row before moving on. This was my third day in Mark 8. I see something new every day, no matter how many times I read it. A few days back I read about the feeding of the five thousand four days in a row. I have heard these stories since childhood, read them hundreds, perhaps into the thousands of times by now.

This is a long introduction to the application of one of the lessons of this story to our daily teaching. They were in a desolate place. Can you identify? Do you not feel alone, isolated, and in a desert in your house with your same children and doing the same lessons again?

Jesus saw them and had compassion. Stop and think about this in your own desolate place right now. Your friends are few, or far away, or oblivious to your daily burdens. Jesus is not. He sees. He knows your struggle, your weakness, your inadequacy, your hunger. The people were hungry in that desolate place. Supplies were far away. It’s a problem. We need to eat. Our children need to learn—need to. What do we do when we feel we have nothing to give?

The truth is, Jesus has compassion on your children, too. He knows they need to learn.

Jesus said: “You give them something to eat.” The disciples look around. They scrounge up enough for one person, perhaps. Why has Jesus given them such an impossible task? Do you relate? You don’t have the right materials, the right know-how, the right understanding to teach your children. There they are, every day, hungry, looking to you for food—for their bellies and for their hearts. What do you give when you feel empty and they are insatiable?

The disciples big question is always–our question is always: how? How do I do this teaching thing right? Keep the baby happy and inspire my apathetic teen ager or train my squirrely seven- year-old? How do I do it when I don’t have the right book? How do I do it when my husband is not supportive? How do I do this when my son may have a learning disability? How do I teach what I don’t understand or have time to figure out or cannot interest my students in?

How may be the wrong question. Perhaps we should ask who? Who will provide? Who will give? Who will inspire? Who will get through? Who will bring order?

Two things we must learn, and relearn: we are God’s and accountable to him, and, we are completely dependent on him. Food should remind us of this. We have seen what one little virus can do to disrupt life. What if the next trial is something that harms the food supply? We cannot live without food. “Your heavenly Father knows what you need.” (Mt. 6:32) My point is not to produce anxiety, but to remind us that everything we already have has been given to us. Just as the loaves and fishes were given to the disciples, inadequate as they appeared, so they had something. What did Jesus do? He took the loaves and gave thanks.

It is actually easy to give thanks. All we need to do is remember whose hand is providing for us and give thanks to the one who has given us what we have. Anxiety causes us to worry about what has not been given, what we lack. But if we have something, anything, we can give it to Jesus, ask him to bless it, give thanks for it. It is extraordinarily perplexing how little we remember to be thankful.

It’s odd in this feeding of the four thousand, or the five thousand, that no one expresses astonishment. We consider it a miracle, but there is no recording of amazement here. Just like eating bread, it’s all very ordinary and commonplace. This should encourage us that to thank him for what we have and what we have not, to ask him to bless and multiply it so we can feed our children, can be as easy as that, as ordinary as that. Just do it.

And expect what you cannot explain. We have a supernatural God, a Spirit, and he still works wonders. None of us can control what will turn the light on for our child, interest them, spark their imagination. We watch it all the time without marveling. They are hungry for knowledge.

We can offer them the little we have and, after Jesus blesses what we give him, we can fully trust that they will be satisfied. We are neither the source of knowledge or the means of their digesting it. We are simply the disciple who gives them “something,” and trust in the one who made us all to feed what is needed and to satisfy them.

I think this is cause to give thanks at the end of the morning lessons, too. He is with us in the desolate places, in the scanty supplies, in all our insufficiencies, and alone knows how to satisfy what they are hungry for. He will do it. As we gather up the crumbs of school debris, let us give thanks that there was more than enough to go around. It is a miracle!