Fishes and Loaves

In my quest to expand my learning and to also increase my writing skills, I challenged myself to read from S Breathnach's  book Simple Abundance and to apply what I read to my own life and write about that.  So far, it's been a good challenge for me, keeping my mind busy and growing, along with my inner self.  Learning about our self and the how's and why's of what we've become can be interesting -- mostly to our selves.  But what others experience can also teach us.

The next two days in the book talk about the parable of the Fishes and Loaves.  A crowd of believers, seekers, and skeptics gathered to hear Jesus teach.  At the end of the long day, his disciples wanted to send the crowd home.  Jesus told them not to be ridiculous, the people were tired and hungry.  The disciples complained, telling him they only had five loaves of bread and two fishes, how can they feed a crowd?  Jesus took the bread and fishes, looked up to Heaven, offered thanks and blessed the food.  The disciples distributed the food and when everyone had eaten their fill, gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers.  

This is a good example of simple abundance.  Sometimes we just don't "get it" , sometimes we just can't see what's right in front of us.  Have you ever had a power struggle in a relationship?  What about a problem with controlling your credit card spending?  A career problem undermining your self esteem?  For me, my biggest strugglen is with self-sabotage issues, namely my eating habits.  

When we don't "get it" it's usually because we can't see what I call the bigger picture.  For me, I might reach for a cookie, tell myself "It's just one cookie", but what I can't see is how the sugar creates chaos on my insides, or how the calories in that one cookie puts pounds on my hips.  We keep trying to make life easy, but let's face it, life is hard.  There will always be struggles of some sort.  But if we keep our eyes on a bigger picture, to step back and have an inward look, perhaps we can lighten the load of those struggles and live a life in simple abundance!