Several years ago we had the privilege of hosting four 8 year-old girls and their chaperone from the African Children’s Choir. These girls came from absolute poverty, starvation. One of the nights, we shared dinner while their chaperone attended a leaders meeting. When I say that they devoured the food, it’s not an overstatement. They ate an entire loaf of bread in less than five minutes. I began to wonder if I would run out of food before they ran out of appetite.
I learned an important lesson that night – hungry kids eat. Those kids were so used to starvation, to never knowing when or where their next meal would come from, that they’d learned to eat as much food as possible when it was available. It’s made it easy for me to say no to an alternate dinner when my kids turn their noses up at something they’re served. If they decide to walk away from the table “hungry” rather than finish their dinner, I know they weren’t really hungry.
This story came to mind last week as Lent began, the season on the church calendar marking the forty days before Easter. I grew up in a tradition that encouraged a Lenten fast – giving up something as a reminder that Christ gave up everything for us. While I don’t regularly observe that tradition now, I couldn’t help but wonder, what if we were to think of Lent as a season of cultivating hunger, of developing a deeper longing for the feast that’s coming at Easter?
Most of us reading this don’t have any real idea what it is to be hungry. Oh we know what it is to have hunger, to desire food, nourishment, replenishment. But what about to be actually starving? To need food so desperately that our very lives depend on it?
And yet this is exactly the condition that is best for our hearts. To know true hunger, and to find that its every fulfillment is met in Jesus. Jesus said it’s a blessing when we’re hungry and thirsty for right standing with God because we will be completely satisfied (Matthew 5:6).
For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:9
Not too long ago I chose to fast because I wanted to be reminded to pray often over a difficult situation. It was never far from my thoughts anyway, but when I felt hungry or weak, I used it as a cue to pause, to pray, to be reminded.
It wasn’t a quiet day – I still did life, maybe a little clumsily because my brain didn’t work quite as well by late afternoon. I don’t think God was more attentive to me because I went without food. But I was reminded of how quickly we get hungry again. How quickly we stumble if we don’t go to Him for nourishment every day. I want my thoughts to be as full of longing for God as they were of longing for food.
On Resurrection Day, God spread a glorious, nothing-held-back, no-expense-spared feast. He gave us the Bread of Life – Jesus. Are you hungry for it? Are you longing for it?
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8