Loaves, Fishes, and Boba
Author: Abigail Robert
October 03, 2024
One of my favorite miracles in the Bible is Jesus feeding the 5,000, described in Mark 6:30-44. When I was younger, I remember looking closely at the illustrations in a children’s Bible. On one page, there was a little boy lifting up to the disciples his five loaves of bread and his two fish. On the next page, there were multitudes of baskets overflowing with soft, fluffy brown bread and blue, scaly fish. I flipped the page back and forth, wondering “How?”
On September 6th, God gave me my own loaves and fishes moment on my college campus.
Weeks before, I had planned to host a welcome event for my pro-life, Christian club: Rice For Life and Boba. The money to pay for it would come from our Student Activities account, which had a healthy balance because of some generous donations. The goal was to use some of our club savings to warmly welcome this year’s incoming freshmen, increase the number of our club members, and entice the broader Rice community with university students’ favorite drink: boba tea.
However, when I went to the Student Activities Office to withdraw the money, an employee told me about a “glitch” that had occurred over the summer. “I’m sorry,” the employee said, “this glitch has caused your account to have this remaining balance.” I looked at the number and was devastated to see that our club had nearly nothing for our Rice For Life and Boba event.
The morning of the event, I got on my computer and started making an online order for boba, knowing that I would have to purchase it with my own savings. However, when it came time to submit the order, I couldn’t get myself to press the button. Partly because it was so expensive, and also because I was hoping for a miracle.
Later that day, I was sitting in a study room inside Kraft Hall with Priscilla, my dear friend and fellow Rice For Life member. I was in an important online meeting when she arrived, so I hadn’t yet told her the bad news. But all of a sudden we heard a knock on the door. Two women looked in and asked, “Hey! Do you want any boba?”
Pausing my meeting, I asked, “How much do you have?” They were lugging a cooler full of boba! I asked, “Are you trying to get rid of it?” She nodded. “Then we will take all of it.”
Priscilla helped the women put all the boba into a giant brown cardboard box while I continued my meeting. The box overflowed with boba drinks. The evidence was unmistakable. God had worked a miracle for me.
Rejoicing, Priscilla and I carried the heavy box from our study room into the student center, where the Rice For Life event was to be held. Then we taste-tested the boba. It was perfectly sweet and refreshing—the best boba we had ever had. And no wonder—when Jesus turned the water into wine, it was “the good wine.” As Priscilla said, this boba was exactly how you’d expect a “blessing boba” to taste.
Having boba turned out to be important. Some new students came to our club that day who didn’t believe in Jesus but had come just for free drink. Yet, when I told them the story about our financial account, how the boba they were drinking was like “manna,” and how alumni were praying for this welcome event, I could see their eyes widen and their jaws drop ever so slightly from their boba straws.
Abigail Robert is a Classical Studies and Biosciences student at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is author of Forget Me Not: Memories of a Memory Caregiver.
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash.
BACK