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PRAYER FOR THE WEEK
Jesus, help me be patient when I have to prove myself to adults. Amen!

When they saw the miracles Jesus was doing, 5,000 people followed Him to a field. They were tired and hungry, but Jesus didn't want to send them home. He took five loaves of bread and two fish, blessed them and gave them to the people. Suddenly, there was enough for everyone! Then the people knew Jesus was sent by God.

When you're a kid, you might feel like you're always proving yourself to adults: proving that you're old enough to stay up late, proving that you're responsible enough to own a pet, proving that you deserve a bigger allowance. Sometimes, you wish people would just believe you without your having to prove anything.

If that's true for a kid, think about how frustrating it must have been for Jesus. He had to prove He was the Son of God to just about every person He met!

Reading this week's Gospel (John 6:1-15), you'd think it would be enough that Jesus had already done some miracles and taught thousands of people about God, helping them to get close to God in a way they never had been before.

But after an entire day of teaching, some of the 5,000 people in the crowd still doubted Jesus. It wasn't until the tiny amount of food became enough to feed all 5,000 of them that they began to see that Jesus could really be the Son of God.

That's not too different from what you go through as a kid. You want to stay up later at night, but you need to prove that you won't be overtired and cranky in the morning. It's not until you try it that your parents know it's true, that you're getting older and can handle a later bedtime.

Proving yourself takes patience. But if Jesus could do it, so can we![[In-content Ad]]

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