ODJ: i am hunger
January 20, 2012
Lift up your hands to Him in prayer, pleading for your children, for in every street they are faint with hunger (v.19).
READ: Lamentations 2:18-20
In a previous article, I wrote about four severely malnourished siblings that I have been feeding daily. The children—Joshua, Mirika, Ashaba, Katseme—look drastically different now that they’ve been receiving nutritious food on a regular basis. Their stomachs are no longer bloated and their skin is no longer covered with sores. Also their hair is no longer falling out in patches.
Often, I think back to the unusual way I first met the children. The oldest, Joshua, was caught stealing food in my house. When I asked him why he chose to steal rather than ask me for food, he replied, “Because I am hunger”.
Lamentations 4:9 claims, “Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger.” If being stabbed is a more pleasant way to pass on than starving to death, it’s no wonder hunger drove Joshua to steal.
Intense hunger depletes a person’s strength (Job 18:12). It causes children to faint (Job 17:5; Lamentations 2:19), and causes the lowly of society to scrounge for food in desolate places (Job 30:3).
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), “The new estimate of the number of people who [suffered] chronic hunger [in 2011] is 925 million.” Our God is a God who surely desires that these hunger statistics improve. Just as He “satisfied [the Israelites’] hunger” by providing meat and manna in the wilderness (Psalm 105:40), God longs to open His hand and “satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing” today (145:16).
Let’s join Him by praying earnestly for the millions of starving people around the world, and by seeking tangible ways to help “satisfy the hunger” of His “treasured ones” (17:14). —Roxanne Robbins
How can you help bring relief to someone who is experiencing extreme hunger? How can the meeting of a person’s physical hunger lead to opportunities to address their spiritual thirst?
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Feeding the physically hungry is much easier than feeding the spiritually hungry, without a doubt, because when feeding the physically hungry, only the finding of food is needed… so make sure you always have some extra in the pantry! Feeding the spiritually hungry is a more challenging matter, but some simple ways to do this include making sure you are both at the same level when talking with one another, having answers ready to common questions, and teaching them how to search for food on their own.
Meeting physical hunger is an easy enough task to do, and it heaps burning coals on the heads of your enemies, haha. Anyone can be hungry at any time, like thirsty, but those we don’t know well might well ask us about our kindness. Hunger also occupies the mouth and frees up the ears in western cultures, allowing us to take control of the conversation and turn it to Jesus, just like He did for the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.