Imagine 100 cities the size of New York City, all bunched together in one location. One by one, the people walk by you, begging for a piece of bread or chunk of cheese. And imagine that happening again tomorrow, and the next day and the next.
It is a fact. Every day, 842 million people in the world are hungry. More than one in five children in the U.S. live in households that struggle to put food on the table.
If you doubt this fact, contact your local school and ask what percent of your school district’s children qualify for free lunches.
It matters to God and to Jesus that people are hungry today. The question is: Does it matter to us?
Don’t get me wrong. Many wonderful things are happening within congregations to feed hungry people. But many of these efforts involve charity. There is a difference between charity and justice. Charity treats symptoms; justice addresses causes.
A well-worn but appropriate analogy goes like this: A church may stand on the riverbank, rescuing children who have been mercilessly thrown into the current. But eventually, the church should go upstream and ask, “What is creating this crisis? Who is throwing babies in the river?”
God cares deeply about physical as well as spiritual hunger. Jesus did not divide human beings up into sections and say, “I care about getting people into heaven, but not about their empty stomachs.”
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