What a quandary. One of my goldfish is missing from the pond – the grey one. My wife saw a kingfisher leaving the area with a guilty look on its face, but with or without the fish, she could not tell. What a pity. That fish was nearly eight years old, and though I never gave it a name, we had a special bond, well, at least kept eye contact each morning as I delivered room service. And now he’s gone.

The quandary is that lovely verse in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Indeed he does. But I think that cared-for bird was fed with my fish! And there’s the tension. At least the boy who donated his lunch to Jesus, to feed the five thousand, got some bread and fish in return. But my little grey-boy was a one-way lunch.

Of course that’s wrong. The Lord gives and takes away. And when he takes away, he gives afresh. And so the lunch will return. And if the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills, then he owns my fish as well. Besides he made it, though I might have originally bought it. And what’s more, the whole point the Sermon makes is this: “Are you not much more valuable than they? Will he not care for you, O ye of little faith?”