Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. Deut 10:22 NASB
How many ways can you combine six Lego bricks? If you are one of my grandkids, the possibilities are endless. If it is me, you might get a fence, a short tower, or maybe a tiny house for ants but not much more. LEGO supposedly answered that question in 1974 with possible combinations of 102,981,500. This is a few more than I could come up with, but if you give the six pieces to mathematician, Soren Eilers, you might be surprised. Eilers is a mathematics professor at the University of Copenhagen.
During a visit to the Denmark LEGOLAND, he questioned that number. So, like any good mathematician, he went to work on developing a software program to determine the actual combinations you could get from six little Lego bricks each with eight studs. What’s your guess? Chances are unless you know the answer you might be surprised. LEGO was way off their calculations. There are 915,103,765 possible permutations with just six little bricks!
It had been an amazing but long day for the disciples as they watched Jesus teach and heal the sick. The crowd had grown through the day and now evening was fast approaching with thousands of people sitting on the hillside. The disciples recognized the situation and how late it was getting. Out of compassion, or panic, they worried about the crowd’s welfare and reminded Jesus, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging because we are in a remote place here.” (Luke 9:12)
It was a good common sense suggestion until Jesus asked Philip an interesting question. “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” (John 6:5) Scripture doesn’t say, but Philip probably looked around at the crowd and his fellow disciples and gave the best answer he could. “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
Can you imagine if you had been sitting on the grass with Jesus and he gave you six LEGO bricks and told you to build a model spaceship? That’s probably about how far-fetched it sounded to the disciples when they were told to feed the crowd – five thousand men, not counting the women and children.
Faith sometimes feels like you are facing an impossible task. You find yourself in circumstances that leave you struggling with doubt and fear. You have reached your limits and yet you hear Jesus say, “You give them something to eat.” With what?
Andrew, another of the disciples, was trying to figure out the probability of feeding so many people with so very little. Andrew found Jesus was always asking questions that didn’t make sense, simply to test them, was this one of them? So he mustered all the faith he could find for that moment and spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” (John 6:9)
Philip gave a good logical, managerial answer on how to solve the problem. Andrew started thinking outside the box, but he found his box too small. The other disciples just sat there looking at a growing, restless, and hungry crowd. I am sure they had compassion for the people but what could be done? That’s a question we have all asked when facing a daunting problem.
“Faith seldom questions God’s power, but it doubts whether he is willing. But he is as willing as he is able! His goodness is infinite, and so nothing less than his omnipotence. He is willing to hear, as you are to pray; as willing to grant, as you are to ask; and as willing for you to have, as you desire to have it.” (David Clarkson)
Nicholas Winton was a 29-year-old stockbroker in London during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power. Most people ask the question similar to what Philip did to Jesus that day, What can we do? It would take resources beyond our abilities. Winton’s motto in life was “If something is not impossible, then there must be a way to do it” which led him to undertake a seemingly impossible mission: the rescue of 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia during the nine months before war broke out in 1939.
Winton traveled to Prague for a week to aid refugees. His week-long trip would turn into a full-time operation. He said of the unfolding humanitarian crisis “I have seen this and I cannot unsee it.” With the help of his wife Barbara and other volunteers, they undertook the challenge of evacuating children from Prague and relocating to the U.K. (Armani Syrd, Time)
The final train with 250 children didn’t make it out of Prague and all the children were sent to concentration camps with only two surviving the war. Yet because of Winton’s efforts to give life to the 669 children who did make it, over the years it has given life to over 6,000 children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren. Winton wore a ring given by some of the rescued children that bore a line from the Talmud, “Save One Life. Save the World.” (Max Lucado, A Heart for Children)
Soren Eilers took six plastic molded LEGO bricks and found 915,103,765 possibilities. Jesus took a small boy’s offering of five pieces of bread and two small fish and fed a crowd. Nicholas Winton’s small step gave life to over 6,000 others.
What are the possibilities? Faith opens those doors beyond our imagination because of a God who does the impossible. This week begins the journey towards the ultimate rescue operation, Easter. One man gave himself to save the world!
God is great!