The cheese, the baguette and the papaya

Once upon a time, more years ago now than I care to admit in public, I received a phone call that led me into experiencing a miracle.

I was relaxing at home in Costa Rica with our children, while my husband was away accompanying some North American young people who had come for a short term missions experience. The phone call was from my husband, who told me that the whole crew was on the way to our house for a meal. Nobody had warned me about this, and I had less than half an hour to prepare.

We were used to offering hospitality, which I suppose is why Edwin felt free to invite them over to eat, since he logically assumed that I would have something to serve. Unfortunately I didn’t. A quick inventory of the kitchen produced less than a pound of cheese, a day-old baguette, and a papaya. That wouldn’t be much to serve two full carloads of guys, especially since they had been outside working all day and would have impressive appetites. My first thought was to run over to the little corner grocery store and get a few things, but that was impossible since it was Saturday afternoon and the store was closed. I couldn’t drive off to the supermarket, either, because Edwin had the car.

So I set the table nicely, as though there would be some sort of banquet, and started cutting up the papaya into cubes. Fortunately papayas in Costa Rica are large. Then I sliced the baguette, almost paper thin, and laid a small square of cheese on each piece. I thought that if I toasted them in the oven it would not be so noticeable that the bread was a bit stale, or that there wasn’t really much cheese. Actually the fact that the bread was old and a bit dry made it easier to cut thin slices.

The guests arrived, and began guzzling the fresh lemonade I had made from the fruit of the tree we had in the back yard. I kept slicing that baguette and the cheese, toasting them, and putting them out on the table. I kept two cookie sheets busy for quite some time producing these miniature sandwiches. Finally the demand slowed down, and there were a couple left uneaten on the serving plate. Everyone declared that they were comfortably full. A short time later they were off on their next adventure.

As I cleaned up I suddenly realized what had happened. I am not sure this long after the fact how many people there were, but ten is the most likely number, plus our little family of five. Everyone ate and was satisfied, and I still had bread, cheese, and papaya left over.  

Where it came from, I don’t know. All I know is that when I went to cut more bread and cheese there was more bread and cheese to cut.

Now when I read the stories of Jesus feeding the five thousand and the four thousand, they don’t seem strange at all. Whatever He wants to do can be done with whatever He provides.