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The Law of the Bakery

August 4th, 2008 by Bryan Allain | Filed under faith.

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The Law of the Bakery says this: “One loaf of bread can feed around 20 people”.

If you were a loaf of bread, all hot and fresh on your way out of the bakery (personally, I’d be a rye), you would be aware of this law. You would know your purpose and your limitations. I exist to feed people, and I can probably feed about 20 of them.

In the Bible there’s a couple instances recorded of Jesus feeding people with loaves of bread. In Mark 8, he has 5 loaves and there’s about 4,000 people. Imagine if, when Jesus went to use those loaves, they all jumped out of his hands and said, “We got it from here, Jesus. We know who we are, we know our purpose, and we know our limitations. We’ll do the best we can. Thanks for your support”? According to the Law of the Bakery, there would have been about 3,900 people still hungry and no bread left.

Of course, Jesus was/is not bound by the Law of the Bakery. And in his hands, those loaves of bread not only fed over 500 people each, they still had more to give when it was all said and done.

The take-home is obvious, but we still seem to live like we don’t really believe it.

Whoever you are reading this, I’m guessing you have some amazing talents and abilities, and on your own, you can probably do some pretty cool stuff. After all, you have a good sense of who you are. You know your limitations and you have a general idea about your purpose in life.

But I believe, if you make yourself available, God can do things through you that shatter your limitations and completely redefine your purpose.

Do you believe that? I mean really believe it? If so, then stop living like you’re bound by the Law of the Bakery and ask God to use you like He wants to. Forget about the limitations you think you have and open yourself up to an unlimited God. Not so He can make YOU look great, but so He can do great things THROUGH YOU.

Isn’t that how God seems to work? Doing amazing things through ordinary people?

So…why not you?

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6 Responses to “The Law of the Bakery”

  1. Geof F. Morris | 4/08/08

    Because we have to relinquish control.

  2. Bryan Allain | 4/08/08

    man, ain’t that the truth.

    at the risk of overworking the analogy, there is something appealing about going “OK, I’m alright with feeding just 20 people because I can manage that. Maybe I can even figure out which people I want to feed, when they can eat, and how much they can have.”

  3. Curt | 4/08/08

    Nice one, Bryan.

  4. Geof F. Morris | 4/08/08

    And to over-extend even further, “Maybe my 20 will pass it forward.” And while there’s something to that, you’ve just taken God out of the equation entirely and made it about you being the domino that starts everything.

    I am ever so guilty of that.

  5. Bryan Allain’s Blog » Blog Archive » Let’s Talk About Bread | 5/08/08

    [...] wanted to add a follow-up thought to the Law of the Bakery thoughts I had yesterday. Geof mentioned in the comments that sometimes we don’t want to make [...]

  6. karyn | 5/08/08

    thanks bry, very encouraging

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