Can we be honest? We don’t have a
good relationship with food. We eat too much. We eat in unhealthy ways. We
throw too much food away.
Even if we cut back on the calories
and practice portion control, we can’t forget the wider world. We can avoid
feelings of guilt only by ignoring the starvation around the world. A
heartbreaking story arose out of South Sudan on Christmas Day of 2020. Kallayn
Keneng watched her two children die of hunger. They both cried and begged her
for food, but she had nothing to give them. After her 7-year-old and 5-year-old
children died, she had no strength to bury them, so she simply covered their
bodies in grass.1
The hunger of the world hangs over
us. One pastor friend once tried an experiment in his church. He colluded with
the youth, giving them a tambourine to pass around during a church service.
Every few seconds, one of the youths struck the tambourine, and then passed it
to another youth. The adults in the congregation spoke up and demanded to know
what the youth were up to. The pastor cautioned patience and assured the
congregation that they would receive an explanation.
At the end of the service, one of
the youths went to the microphone to explain that each tambourine strike
represented a child dying of hunger. We put out of our minds the hunger of the
world and the deaths of children, but the tambourine kept them from sliding off
the radar screen.
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