Love Matters

Hunger

HUNGER

“There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation, than for bread.” Mother Teresa

The very word to many Americans often brings the image of children’s sad faces with bloated bellies, guilt or avoidance at the atrocity, or a distaste of advertisers constantly begging for money.

Do we as Americans really understand TRUE hunger? I know that in America there are people, often next door, who go days without food, shelter, and the daily needs that many of us take for granted. Yet still, even though we have poor and homeless, we are considered to be one of the wealthiest of nations. However, is food the real issue?

The world is starving, but not merely for food. We are starving for something greater, and that is the presence of what we were created for. We were born lacking the sustenance needed to satisfy our very soul, the sustaining Presence and Righteousness of a Holy Creator.

While listening to a popular radio station, the announcer stated that they had recently visited an African village in which many mothers made mud cakes and fed them to their children to carb the insatiable hunger pains. There was no nutritional value in the meal they were given, but a full belly with empty calories seemed a better solution than an empty stomach all together. We are often like those mothers, filling our insatiable hunger for love and appreciation with things that, at the moment, fill us and quench the pain of emptiness, yet in the end leave us just as empty. Some of the things we tend to fill our lives with such as, relationships, success in our career, or pleasures, actually have a pleasant “taste” at first, but in the end can leave us just as empty and unfulfilled, if our focus is merely on “being filled”. It seems as much as we obtain, we never seem to have enough, and what we do gain never seems to fill the void. As humans we have a desperate need to find SOMETHING to fill that void, whether “good” or “bad”, to FILL the emptiness seems to be our ultimate goal.

In Philippians 3 Paul speaks to the Philippians about guarding their faith. He warns about those who claim to follow Christ but actually are, as he calls them, enemies of the cross of Christ. They only live to satisfy their insatiable appetite for the world. Philippians 3:19 “They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life on earth.” Filling their hunger with temporal satisfaction is their goal and Paul calls them enemies. He warns us not to focus or fix our eyes on the temporal things, but to fix our eyes on the heavenly things and be kingdom minded. If we are to hunger for anything it should be righteousness, for in that we are promised to be satisfied. Matthew 5:6 “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied“ Jesus said in John 6:35 ” I am the bread of life: he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”

When we are satisfied with the unquenchable righteousness of Christ, we won’t have to be concerned about helping those around us who are hungry. The LOVE we have in us, will compel us to minister to the physical needs of others, and we will have what can truly satisfy them, the presence of a Holy Loving God.

Is there something you have been filling your life with that seems to satisfy the hunger for a moment, but leaves you with the same empty feeling you are trying to escape? "Taste and see that the Lord is good: Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in Him!" Psalm 34:8

copyright 2018 Debbie Reed