The Feeding of the Five Thousand, depicted in Matthew 14:13-21, is one of the most astonishing of Jesus’s earthly miracles. He and his disciples went ashore where a great crowd had assembled. We’re told it was a desolate place, far from markets and fields. After a day of teaching and healing, it grows late in the day. The disciple urge Jesus to disperse the crowd, to encourage them back to go back to the villages where they can eat.
Jesus says, “Let them stay, you feed them.”
The disciples were gobsmacked. “We don’t have any food. There are five thousand people out there. How are we going to feed them? There’s only a boy here with five loaves and two fish.”
You remember the story. Jesus blesses the food. The disciples distribute it. Five thousand are fed. And there are plenty of leftovers.
In the next chapter, the series of events repeats itself with a group of four thousand. The disciples, the same guys who had just seen him feed five thousand, still ask, “Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?” It is only after Jesus repeats the miracle that he asks, “Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?”
We are just beyond the half-way mark in our Make it a Million Match campaign. At this writing $252,651 has been contributed since the first of the year; $247,349 remain available in matching funds until May 31, 2026. That means any contribution you make to The Serious Joy Scholarship between now and then will be doubled. Contribute a dollar, it becomes two. Contribute $100, it becomes $200. Contribute $5,000, it becomes $10,000, a full scholarship, and so on.
If there might be one person out there whose love of Jesus is so full that it would overflow in generosity, with one check of $247,349, the campaign would be over. The scholarships for this year would be fully subscribed. But it might take two contributors writing checks for $123,674, or ten writing checks of $24,734.90. More likely, it will be 700 contributors for $353.35. The truth is it will require gifts both large and small.
But we claim future grace, not with presumption, but in the total confidence that we do not labor in vain. The ministry of Bethlehem College and Seminary is God’s ministry. These are his students. His teachers are teaching his gospel truth. We fully expect that he will satisfy our needs, because they are his out-workings.
You see, we do remember. We remember not only the promises of God’s word, we remember the testimony of his faithfulness through 18 previous school years when we were always blind to the sources of our funding, but then always witnessing God showing his favor to his purposes. Our needs have been supplied, year-after-year.
There are only a few weeks remaining in this campaign. We write not to coerce, only to remind you of this wonderful multiplying effect underwritten by other generous contributors—a true, dollar-for-dollar match of any gift you make before May 31, 2026.
The Serious Joy Scholarship is Bethlehem College and Seminary’s instrument to allow our students to receive a Bible-saturated, academically rigorous education, then launch immediately into life, ministry, vocation, and adult responsibilities without federal student loan debt. Pulpits are being filled, ministries staffed, nations reached, Classical and Christian K-12 faculties supplied, workplaces influenced, and the theological academy seasoned by a new generation of men and women who have learned that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
Let God use you to put his bow on all of this. Be a part of God’s out-pouring of favor on the God-entranced mission of Bethlehem College and Seminary. Contribute to The Serious Joy Scholarship. Make it a Million. We’re more than half-way there.
Rick Segal
Vice President of Advancement & Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy