A tiny grain of wheat can seem so insignificant and yet imagine a world without wheat … bread has been a staple food for civilisation since antiquity. Some early comers to Australia came here for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving families … for those living in poverty there was often no more than bread.
And Jesus took an ordinary, everyday, commonplace loaf of bread, broke it with his disciples and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”.
It’s in the small things that he gives us the opportunity to be his hands and feet.
That came home to me this week as I read news from Dr Mardi Steere and her husband Andy, missionaries working at Kijarbe Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.
Kijabe Hospital is faith-based, providing compassionate health care, excellent medical training and spiritual ministry in Christ. But right now the hospital is overwhelmed as doctors and medical personnel throughout Kenya have been on strike since early December. So many in need of urgent medical care are turning to Kijabe for help.
How do you cope when there are more patients than beds and staff to care for them and more babies who need ventilators than there are ventilators?
Please pray for strength for Mardi and the many other dedicated personnel at Kijabe Hospital, for whom being a 'human ventilator' for hours on end is one small example of sharing the love of Jesus among the suffering.
Oh the beauty of the ordinary. The wild, crazy, wonder of God in taking the ordinariness of our everyday lives and transforming it into a healing, saving, nourishing work, for his glory, our good and the blessing of others.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. " John 12: 24