JourneyOnline
I LIKE food.
I like it a lot.
I am from a family of good eaters.
I am from a family full of people with that wonderful gift called hospitality … people who want to feed the world and love the world.
The older I get, the more I find these two ideas inextricably linked.
The older I get, the more I wonder if it’s possible to love the world without feeding it.
The older I get, the sadder I become that we call ourselves a people of love and yet somehow consistently forget to feed our brothers and sisters in need.
Sometimes I go without food for a period of time to remind myself of its value.
I hate it every time.
I hate feeling hungry.
But if I didn’t make a conscious decision to invite hunger into my days, I know that I could roll from one meal to the next for
my entire life without ever really experiencing it.
Truly hungry people know the value of food so much more than I ever will.
It seems to be reflected in the very core of their beings.
It seems to be that the more they hunger for bread, the more they learn to hunger for the true bread of life.
Most of the time hungry people show me Jesus a lot better than full people do, so I like to spend as much time with them as I can.
I’ve spent many months of my life sitting with orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; children who are
hungry more often than they’re full.
Jesus once said this strange thing.
He said, “He who comes to me will never go hungry.”
I get confused by this because I’ve spent a lot of time with people who daily come to Jesus and daily go to bed hungry.
But then there’s another part of me that is inspired as I see orphans daily coming to Jesus.
For I see that they aren’t hungry for the things that I am hungry for.
They aren’t hungry for popularity or mansions.
They aren’t hungry to be defined by what they wear.
They aren’t hungry for a better body.
They aren’t hungry for status and power.
They are hungry for things that matter … food, education, clothes, shelter, love, and Jesus.
I wish I could say that I only hunger after things that really matter.
But I do not.
So I will continue to sit with hungry orphans and widows.
I will continue to sit and marvel at that amazing thing God does with the least of these.
That he would reveal himself so clearly to me in the faces of the hungry is a daily miracle.
That he would call me to be like them is a daily challenge.
I often wonder about really stepping into their world.
If we could all allow ourselves to be inspired by these people then maybe, somehow, we’d become the solution to the things they hunger for.
The things that matter.
The Same Old Story a new CD from Remember Seven www.rememberseven.com.au
Photo : Katie Wallis with Caleb, an abandoned baby living in Iisaiah’s home of love, one of the projects Ms Wallis’ band Remember Seven supports. Photo by Joy Stovall
