When we say “yes!” to Jesus, He enlists us into His mission of saving, healing and loving people, and that can be hard, dangerous, tiring work. It can wear us out. But as we watch Jesus serve breakfast to a group of hungry disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee we learn something very important about our Lord. He is not indifferent to our sufferings. He is not passive or thankless. He knows when we grow hungry, weary, lonely or afraid, and He will come to comfort us. He will show us His love in surprising acts of kindness, and that kindness is very practical. It meets us at our point of need. He feeds us when we are hungry. He sits with us when we are lonely. He builds our faith when we are fearful. He restores our vision when we are discouraged. And those surprising acts of kindness remind us of who He is and assure us of His respect for us. We are His people, His Beloved, His Bride. He is deeply aware of our suffering, and we can count on Him to come and help us in our time of need. That’s one of the lessons we learn from that amazing breakfast in Galilee.

Those seven men weren’t foolish when they went fishing, they were desperate. They needed to provide for their families, but after a long, cold night on the lake they had caught nothing, and they must have been discouraged that morning. Each one of those men had left his livelihood to follow Jesus, but that season of traveling with Him from town to town was now over. All they knew at that moment was that He was alive and that He had told them to wait for Him in Galilee, so they were waiting. But waiting didn’t feed their families. That’s why Peter said, “I’m going fishing” and allowed the others to join him. He was willing to share whatever they caught. But as the first light of morning turned the dark sky grey, they were all sitting there in that boat with nothing to show for their efforts. They must have been tired, cold and hungry when suddenly one of them spotted a man standing on the shore about a hundred yards away. It was Jesus. The glorious, resurrected Messiah and divine Son of God had come down to the beach and lit a campfire and was going to serve them breakfast.

We must not skip over these few verses. The event they describe is absolutely amazing. It beautifully reveals the heart of our Lord. It shows us how He cares for us, and it teaches us how to care for others. Let’s join those seven men at that campfire and learn with them the same lessons.