“Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?”

I once worked for someone who refused to see the possibilities until he had exhausted all the downsides and risks.  Behind his back he had the adjective “Downer” in front of his name.  He always looked for the hole in the doughnut before he could see the opportunities.  Quite honestly, all of us who worked for him got a little gun-shy and after time stopped taking to him big ideas and open-ended brainstorms.  We learned to cope, but the best thinking and many possibilities were lost.  A little optimism and celebrating the possibilities can be multiplicative in its power and motivation. Don’t worry, there will be many chances to find the downside, but don’t go there first if you want the best from people.

Imagine what the Disciples thought when Andrew, pointed out his observation?  I think it might have gone something like this.  He heard Jesus ask the faith-stretching question around how could they buy enough to feed 5000 people.  At about the same time, Andrew saw, excitedly, a little boy who had five loaves and two fish.  “Hey, look what I found!’ might have been his excited words, but then he caught himself after he realized what he had said and how absurd it was to his peers, the other Disciples, and fearfully what Jesus might have thought, so he retracted his observation with, “(Ahem)..but…(then again) that’s a drop in the bucket for this many people”.  But see what Jesus did next.  There was no evaluative or congratulatory statement to Andrew.  Jesus just moved on to the next possibility.  Andrew saw the first possibility and good that he had or maybe the miracle wouldn’t have come to have happened.  We don’t know,  But, what we do know is that when we see life as a set of possibilities that we can take to God, He has proven to us that He will do miracles with what is provided.

Reference: John 6: 8-9 (New Living Translation)