Thoughts on miracles

At a lavish banquet there is the practice of smashing the crystal glasses to indicate affluence. Jesus made something big out of something small when he fed the 5000. He asked his disciples to collect the scraps. Jesus performs the miracle serving up a banquet as if he could perform it at any moment. But here even the scraps were important. And the poor person says, the richest one gathers up the scraps as if he were the poorest of all.

Dostoyevsky said, "The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Faith does not...spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith."

And so Jesus has the crumbs collected and he has no disdain for the crumbs. He gives them a banquet showing divine abundance, and in the end he is the one who is broken and smashed.