Hunger

~Matthew 25.37-40 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? . . . .’
“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’"

If we see hunger, the Lord expects us to share.

The problem is that most hunger is hidden from Americans. And when we do see it in the news, it's so far away and outside our experience as to seem unreal. We cannot give from our abundance directly into those reaching hands on the screen. We must give through others, aid agencies with generously paid administrators and overhead costs.

And there are other problems as well. A book called The Crisis Caravan (Linda Polan) documents some of these. In Three Famines: Starvation and Politics Thomas Keneally asserts that it's not lack of food production or availability as much as political instability and logistics which keep food from hungry people. Local armed militia can confiscate the food aid or for a number of complex reasons it may rot in storage, etc.

What does this mean for us?