Well Said: Being one of the five thousand

How naturally a common meal serves for a symbol of fraternity; how easily a scratch party of guests get on together if you take them out for a picnic in the open air! Just imagine what it must have meant, later on, if one of those five thousand met, by accident, one of the others; what fellowship must have been imposed on them by their common store of reminiscences! "Yes, don't you remember, I was sitting about seven or eight off you, and Peter — or John, or James, or Judas — came round with the crust which looked as if it could never satisfy more than two; we both seemed to be in starvation corner, didn't we? And then when he got to the end of the row the crust was still there."

G. Chevrot, The Well of Life

via In Conversation with God, vol. 4

You know, it never occurred to me to think about any of the people for whom Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, at least from the point of view of their lives later on. There were so many of them, in one case 5,000 and in another 4,000, and Israel was a small country. Maybe a lot of them were related. Of course, they would have bumped into each other later on.