In the specifics Jesus takes a handful of fish and loaves and uses these few things to feed a huge multitude of hungry people. A general look at what happened is that the disciples had resources which fell pathetically short of the needs which were facing them.
The resource of food, or the need for food, can be hard concept for us to connect to. We are not a society that, in general, worries about our next meal. Who are, however, a society of people who often find our resources lacking relative to an abundant need.
And the resource i think most of us find in the shortest supply is time.
We are surrounded by masses of people who need our time: our jobs ask us to cover more hours, and our debts demands that we listen; our friends need help moving, or painting, or just someone to talk to; our families are understanding, but they need us to be there also... and then there is church.
There never seems to be an end to how much they ask for: Sunday morning, and night, the bible study mid week, that outreach once a month, or the Saturday church work day; womens group, mens group, youth group, worship teams prayer ministry... etc.
This list goes on and I can feel myself, and everyone reading curling up into the fetal position and rocking back and forth.
So what is the solution?
Well I think there is some application from this story for this modern shortfall in time.
When Jesus asked the disciples to begin distributing the food, there was just a little bit of food. It would have been nice if he had waved his hands and made a mountain of fish (yum!) and bread, but he didn't. When the command came to begin the work, it seemed imposable, but the disciples began to do it anyway.
I think there are two important points here:
1) the disciples heard a command from God:
I think many of the things that demand our time may not be Gods desire for our lives. They all seem good, and int the right context the may be, but I think it is important to allow the Holy Spirit to order our lives so that we are not wasting our resources in areas which are not ultimately productive for the Kingdom.
2) The miracle of multiplication occurred AFTER the disciples obeyed. For us I think that we want to see God multiply our resources first, and then we want to ask him what to do with the surplus. But the model we see here is simply hear-obey-multiply.
I think these two things can help us with our time management. If the Holy Spirit leads us to commit our time to something, God will provide for us the resources we need to accomplish that task.
I pray that God gives us all grace to identify those things that He is asking us to commit to, and that we would find both the faith and the discipline to do those things even when it seems like our resources are too few to meet the task.