Why
is there Hunger?
God
has created us hungry beings. We need food every day—and it is not only us.
Every living creature requires daily nourishment of some kind.
Why
did God do this? Why is there even such a thing as hunger?
Certainly
he did not have to make us so that we would become hungry. He could have
created us so that we would not need daily sustenance. He could have created us so that we simply exist without the need for
food. We may even think that in some ways, this would be more desirable. One
way to end world hunger would be for God to abolish hunger. He could make us so
that we do not need food.
But
if we think about it for a couple of minutes, few of us would actually prefer
that. Eating is one of the joys of life. We like
to eat. We all have our favorite foods and we enjoy having a good meal after we
have worked up a healthy appetite.
Besides
that, the practice of having a meal is more than simply supplying nutrition for
our bodies. There also is a social aspect to it, or there should be. We eat
together as families so that we can have conversation and keep in touch with
one another. In many situations with busy schedules, mealtime is the only time when we actually
talk with one another in an genuiconversation.
Auspicious
occasions also are nearly always celebrated with a meal. This is true in
families as it is in social or business organizations. Birthdays,
anniversaries, events to celebrate company achievements, church centennials…
the list could continue at great length.
Eating
is a time of communion and fellowship. It is more than our bodies that are
being fed; it is also fulfilling our need for social interaction. Eating a meal
with someone demonstrates friendship and companionship with that person. It is
an act of solidarity.
It
is no accident that Jesus made great preparations for the last meal that he was
to eat with his disciples. The evening held deep meaning and importance for
him. As he was preparing to depart this earth, he did not set his disciples
down on the ground to give them a lecture and his last instructions. Rather, he
had a meal prepared so that he could speak with them as they ate together.
There
is a deep significance to the food that we eat. It is not simply a cold and utilitarian
manner in which we supply the nutrients to our bodies so that they can
function. It is more than putting gasoline in your car so that it will run.
God
created hunger and eating so that we would know life does not arise on its own,
and it is not self-sustaining.
The Giver and Sustainer of Life
The Giver and Sustainer of Life
One
of the first facts that we learn about life is that it does not appear
spontaneously and independent of a life-giver. That life-giver is God. God
“breathed the breath of life” into Adam and made him a living being.
Life
is also sustained through God. We need God’s life daily in order to continue to
live. As King David wrote in the Psalms:
How
precious is Your loving devotion, O God, that the children of men take refuge
in the shadow of Your wings.
They feast on the abundance of Your house, and You give them drink from Your river of delights.
They feast on the abundance of Your house, and You give them drink from Your river of delights.
For
with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light. (Psalm 36:7-8
BSB)
More that the
Food that We Eat
But
we are not simply physical beings. An often heard phrase for proper nutrition
promotion is “you are what you eat.” It may largely be true with the health of
our bodies, but the phrase gives an incomplete impression on who we are as
people. We are more than just bodies with bellies to fill.
We
are also spirits. We are also souls. Our being is much more complicated than
any book of human physiology would tell us. We have been made in the very image
of God Himself!
Why
is it that we would think that our spirits do not also require daily life-giving
nourishment from our Creator and Sustainer? When our bodies become hungry; we
feed ourselves. We know how to become satisfied in our bellies, but we ignore
the hunger of our spirit. Our inner person is crying out for nutrition. Our
inner-man, our inner-woman is starving to death and we do nothing.
Soon,
much like a person who has reached the final stages of physical starvation, we will
no longer sense the hunger of our spirit. Our hearts become calloused to this
need of our souls. It becomes hardened to the cries of our spirits, and it
becomes unwilling to change the way in which we allow our inner-persons to be
nourished. We ignore our spirits, our hearts solidify into stone, and our
spirits die (See previous post - Ailments of the Heart).
It
is not only our bodies that require nourishment. It is also our spirits. It is
also our souls. Why would we even think that it would be different than this?
Recognizing
Hunger in Your Soul
How
are we to feed our spirits? How are we to maintain a healthy spiritual heart?
Is there a book on nutrition to teach us this?
Actually,
there is. It is the same book that tells us that all life comes from God.
The
first step to having a healthy heart in the spiritual sense is to recognize the
hunger for what it is. In those moments of contemplation, when you are asking yourself, “Is
there not more to life than what I am doing?” the answer is not to have another
beer or plan another vacation.
The
problem that many people have is that when they feel an emptiness inside their
spirits, they try to fill that void by doing something that is meant to satisfy
their outer person. They are feeding the desires of their bodies and not their
spirits.
After
a time, they no longer are even able to tell the difference. Their spiritual
hearts have become calloused and unfeeling. Any emptiness that a person feels
is interpreted by them as a physical desire. They think that they are hungry
for a new experience, a new adventure. They think that they are hungry for a
new job, another house or another car.
And
the difficulty is that it works for them. It fills the emptiness that they
felt—at least for a moment. It works at least until the novelty of the new
self-awarded enticement wears off. It then needs to be repeated. They multiply
unto themselves houses and cars and possessions, but like any addiction, the
same class of enticement is no longer sufficient. It now has to be bigger and
better and to come in increasingly frequent intervals.
The
Apostle Paul says of these people, “Their end is destruction, their god is
their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly
things” (Philippians 3:19 BSB).
Amassing the
Goods of this World
Jesus
told a story about this very thing:
The
ground of a certain rich man produced an abundance. So he thought to himself,
“What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops?”
Then
he said, “This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and will build
bigger ones, and there I will store up all my grain and my goods. Then I will
say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take it
easy. Eat, drink, and be merry!’”
But
God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be required of you.
Then who will own what you have accumulated?”
This
is how it will be for anyone who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich
toward God. (Luke 12:16-21 BSB)
It
is a simple metaphor, and one that we can easily see to be true. Not only do we
know this instinctively, but also in a pragmatic sense and even logically we
know it to be true.
“You
can’t take it with you,” we always say.
But
even so, we continue to live just as the rich man did. Perhaps we are not rich
like him, but our philosophy is the same. We try to satisfy all emptiness
inside by material methods. “Eat, drink, and be merry,” we say. And then we
add, “for tomorrow we die.”
Gladiators in
the Arena of the World
The
final part of that phrase is taken from something that the Apostle Paul wrote.
Paul lived in the days when the gladiators fought lions and other wild beasts
for the entertainment of emperors and crowds of people who came to watch the
events as they would a sporting event.
He
said, “If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for human motives, what did I gain?
If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1
Corinthians 15:32 BSB).
His
point is that in many regards, we are all simply gladiators in the arena,
fighting for life. In the end, we all die. If that is all that there is to our
existence, then we may as well get as much enjoyment out of these fleeting and
ephemeral moments that we have on this earth as we can, for there is nothing
else—nothing beyond the grave.
Those
whose hearts have turned to stone and who no longer hear the cries of their
spirits may actually believe that this is true. But I do not believe this, nor
did Paul. And if you feel that there must be more meaning to life than simply
existing, even if you cannot define what that thing is, neither do you believe
it.
Daily Requirements for the Soul
In
feeding our bodies, nutritionists have come up with a list of “minimum daily
requirements” that a body requires in order to grow and remain healthy. In a
similar way, you may be asking, “What is the minimum that I must do in order
for my spirit to remain alive?”
First
of all, if you are thinking in this way, you have not understood correctly the
importance of your spirit within you. Our present bodies are for a moment, but
our spirits are forever. Our first priority in life should not actually be for
our physical needs, but rather our spiritual.
The
man Job, of ancient days said, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more
than my necessary food” (Job 23:12 BSB)
Recognizing Hunger
I
have referred quite often to the passage of the feeding of the five thousand in
these writings on what I have learned about hunger. The account of the feeding
contains some of the central teachings of Jesus not only of physical hunger,
but also on spiritual hunger.
Using
and multiplying the lunch of a small boy, Jesus first fed the multitude so that
their physical hunger would be satisfied, but he was more interested in
teaching them about spiritual hunger—a lesson that they failed to learn.
On
the following day after the meal, when the people again became hungry, they
came looking for Jesus, hoping to be fed again. They were disappointed. Jesus
did not again perform a miracle to feed them.
I am afraid that Jesus was also disappointed in the response of the multitude.
I am afraid that Jesus was also disappointed in the response of the multitude.
Jesus
did not feed them, but instead said to them, “Do not work for food that
perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will
give you. For on Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval” (John 6:27
BSB).
Jesus
was trying to teach the people that rather than listening to the physical
hunger in their bellies, it was more important to listen to the hunger cries of
their hearts. This hunger cannot be satisfied with consumables of the world.
Jesus
continues, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and
whoever believes in Me will never thirst” (John 6:35 BSB).
A Lesson Lost
The
teaching went far over the heads of the multitude. They had no idea what Jesus
was talking about. Jesus then attempted to clarify things a bit for them, while
at the same time realizing that the clarification may even add to the
confusion. The people simply were not ready to hear:
Truly,
truly, I tell you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. This is the bread that
comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh. (John 6:47-51 BSB)
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh. (John 6:47-51 BSB)
Jesus
was trying to teach them a critical concept in spiritual hunger. It is a hunger
that every man and woman has experienced, but one which few properly recognize.
We are so focused on our physical needs that we misinterpret when our spirit is
in need. Jesus was telling the people that the hunger that they actually felt
was spiritual, and could not be satisfied with physical bread.
These
were perplexing words for the followers of Jesus. They could not grasp this
spiritual truth. “This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept it?” they asked.
Many of them turned away and would no longer followed him.
I
will not say that the twelve core disciples understood it any better. But there
was a difference in the way that they responded. Even though they could not
understand all that Jesus said, they knew the he was opening up for them an
entire new way of viewing their existence.
A Lesson Gained
After
the multitude had left, Jesus asked those few remaining with him, “Do you want
to leave too?”
Simon
Peter’s reply expresses the attitude that all true followers of Jesus must have
if we are to grow in understanding. “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the
words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God”
(John 6:68-69 BSB).
Like
Peter and the disciples, today’s true disciple has walked with Jesus long
enough through the events of life and has seen that he merits our confidence,
even when we are unclear about what is happening.
Today’s true disciple has come to recognize that the teachings that Jesus brings have always proven to be true. Many of the teachings are difficult at first, but as we grow in experience and understanding, we come to recognize that he speaks from a perspective that we do not experience in the world.
Today’s true disciple has come to recognize that the teachings that Jesus brings have always proven to be true. Many of the teachings are difficult at first, but as we grow in experience and understanding, we come to recognize that he speaks from a perspective that we do not experience in the world.
Today’s
true disciple does not abandon the teachings of Jesus when he speaks of
something too difficult for us to grasp. We know that in time and with more
experience, we will grow in our understanding.
Again I compare this to our daily experiences. When we are learning calculus, for instance, and confront a new concept that is difficult to grasp, we do not abandon the entire teaching. That is, we do not if we are sincere in learning the subject.
Rather, we understand that we must expand our perspective to come to an understanding. Then slowly, it all begins to become clear to us.
Again I compare this to our daily experiences. When we are learning calculus, for instance, and confront a new concept that is difficult to grasp, we do not abandon the entire teaching. That is, we do not if we are sincere in learning the subject.
Rather, we understand that we must expand our perspective to come to an understanding. Then slowly, it all begins to become clear to us.
Peter
realized this not only when he expressed this confidence in Jesus, but he did
so for his entire life. He later wrote in one of his letters concerning some of
the teachings that God had revealed to the Apostle Paul:
Consider
also that our Lord’s patience brings salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul
also wrote you with the wisdom God gave him.
He
writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some
parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people
distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2
Peter 3:15-16 BSB)
Our First Bites
to Begin the Feast
But
we need to begin, and the very first step is to recognize that our souls need
to be fed. Hunger that we feel inside is not always related to the stomach.
Much of it is related to the heart. God created us hungry beings and the hunger
of our stomachs is meant to teach us that there is also a hunger in our spirits
that needs to be satisfied.
Peter
wrote in another of his letters, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure
spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have
tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 1:2-3 ESV).
He
also wrote, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ” (2 Peter 3:18 BSB).
We
are to grow, and in order to grow, we need to correctly and adequately respond
to the hunger inside. We are to feed our spirits and our souls. We are to
respond to the hunger of our hearts.
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If you would like to help the children of the Log Church Orphanage of Kisii, Kenya, you may make your check out to "The Log Church" and write "Orphans" on the memo line.
If you would like to help the children of the Log Church Orphanage of Kisii, Kenya, you may make your check out to "The Log Church" and write "Orphans" on the memo line.
Send it to:
The Log Church
PO Box 68
Tripoli, Wisconsin 54564
Every nickel given in this way will be used for only aid for the orphans. It will be used for purchasing food, clothing, schooling, and other necessities of living. Nothing is held back or diverted for any other purpose
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