What Does It Mean To Be Hungry?
The Harvest of Talents committee sponsored a Hunger Awareness Week in May. For this event, we asked people to choose seven foods and only eat those seven choices for a full week. The purpose of this was not to go hungry, but to experience a small portion of what others have to deal with in terms of the availability and lack of abundance in choice.
If we don’t have the choices we normally do, will we still be thankful for what we have? If we are deliberately mindful of the plight of others, will we do more for them with our daily efforts or our pocketbooks? We hope so.
Through this experience, we learned many things. There is an aspect of what we did that the less fortune don’t have to deal with, which is overlooking all of the choices to focus on a small number of foods. But, the starving in the world have to deal with so much more than us such as making choices between feeding one child and another and being lucky to get one meal a day.
As for me, during Hunger Awareness Week, I had to tell my kids that they couldn’t have their treat after their soccer game — big deal, right? A small sacrifice when all of the other kids were lining up for their snacks, but it made a big statement…and a big impression on my kids, I hope. Candy wasn’t on their 7 foods list. During the week, we prayed for starving people in world. We prayed, like Jesus, that they would come to know Him AND get their bellies filled.
Hunger takes many forms. During Hunger Awareness Week, we were hungry for raspberries…precisely because we couldn’t have them. Jesus talks about hungering and thirsting for righteousness and how he is the bread of life. At Unity Christian Church, we know that it’s more important for people to be fed spiritually than physically. However, we insist on both! Why? James 2:15-17
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
Join me in thanking God for raspberries, peanut butter, the bowl of ice cream you have before bed, morning coffee, the bread of life, and living water…because what it means to be hungry is both a spiritual and physical problem.
If you are looking for ways to participate in helping relieve world hunger, check out our Harvest of Talents events on the church calendar (link on the top bar) or at this page.