Breaking = multiplying

Before the bread was multiplied…

Before the miracle fell into hungry hands…

Before the crowd was satisfied and the baskets were full…

He blessed it.

And then He broke it.

And then it was multiplied.

It is easy to rejoice in the blessing.

We lift our hands and sing with gratitude when His favor rests upon us.

We shout when He takes the little we have and lifts it to Heaven.

We say, “Thank You,” when we are seen, chosen, named.

But no one wants the next part.

The breaking.

What do You do, Lord, with the ones You bless… and then break?

I used to think breaking meant something went wrong.

I thought it was a punishment.

A sign of disapproval.

A consequence of failure.

But now I’m beginning to see, You only break what You intend to multiply.

I have been blessed.

And now, I am being broken.

You took what little I had—this feeble life, these fractured dreams, this small heart—and You lifted it.

You called it enough in Your hands.

You smiled as You blessed it.

But then You broke it.

And the shattering didn’t feel holy.

It felt cruel.

It felt like loss.

It felt like I was forgotten after being favored.

Like I was seen just long enough to be emptied.

But now I wonder…

Who will benefit from my breaking?

Who will be fed by this pain I didn’t choose?

Who will find healing in the hollow places of me that once held joy?

Who will taste of You in the places I thought only held suffering?

Is this what it means to be poured out like bread, passed from hand to hand?

Not to be consumed in vain, but to be used for something greater?

Maybe the miracle wasn’t in the lifting or even the blessing.

Maybe the miracle happened in the breaking—because that’s when the multiplication began.

Not before.

The blessing named me.

The breaking changed me.

And now… maybe the giving can begin.

I don’t feel strong enough to be handed out like this.

But if this ache becomes someone else’s nourishment—

If my grief becomes the loaf passed to another soul in famine—Then, Jesus… break me again.

Just don’t take Your hands off of me.

Because if You are the One who breaks me,

You are also the One who will multiply what I could never make enough.

And maybe that’s the point.

I was never enough for the crowd.

But in Your hands, my breaking becomes a banquet.

Let them eat.

Let them see Your goodness in my pain.

Let them taste mercy in my surrender.

Let them be filled with the fragments of this broken life—Because somehow, in You…

even the leftovers will be sacred.

“And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them…”

—Mark 6:41

“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”

—John 6:12