day 14: too full to eat?

"blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

matthew 5:6

i have had the privilege to travel a considerable amount in my 29 years. yesterday was my birthday and my mom pointed out that i have celebrated my birthday in a lot of different places other than home in NJ. junior year of high school i spent it on a youth group missions trip to cary, misssissippi. the following year i was on a school spring break trip to italy. junior year of college my birthday was spent in transit from NJ back to calvin college in MI. the following year i was with a group of college friends on spring break in colorado. last year was spent serving with our youth group in ghana, west africa. i love to travel (not just on my birthday though). it exposes you to landscapes and cultures and food. it puts faces to a place that once was just a dot on a map.

some of my traveling has been to places with incredible poverty, both within the US and overseas in third-world countries. my semester abroad to daystar university in kenya (nairobi and athi river campus) opened my eyes and my heart to poverty that is hard to imagine. within nairobi is the largest and poorest african slum in kibera. approximately one million people live (hard to consider it living) in one-square mile. no water, no sewage, no toilets, no roads. houses are wooden shacks with mud floor and tin roof. it is hard to imagine. no photo can do it justice. it is hard to see.

nairobi is filled with street children. many of them walk around high off of the glue that they sniff from a bottle. begging is a way of life. mzungus (white people) are their targets. we were trained on our first day of touring the city with the respond - si lao. not today. the the several months that i spent there i began to recognize the faces of these street children. they recognized me too. one day a few of them grabbed my hands and the hands of my friends with me and followed us into nakumatt, the food store that we frequented. i knew i didn't want to give them money. just like here in the states, you don't know where that money will go or how it will be spent. i also knew that if i did anything for them it could very possibly become a habit. they may tell their other friends and those street children would expect something from me too. but i couldn't just give them the line that they expected. i couldn't tell them, not today. i bought them a few items from the store. not that one day of food would make a big difference in their many days of poverty. if only that loaf of bread and packs of crackers could turn into enough to feed them every day.

i don't know what hunger feels like. i don't know how it feels to do absolutely anything in order to survive. i have never had to dig through garbage in hopes of finding someone's leftovers that i can have as a meal. i have never sniffed glue out of a bottle in order to mask the embarrassment of having to beg.

yet i put garbage into my body, my mind, my heart, even my soul, every day. i have the option of something much better, much more satisfying, and yet i settle for less. some relationships, entertainment, money, even certain forms of food and drink, are all poison that i put into my body. it never satisfies. ingesting such things is damaging and yet habit. i am too full of this junk to be hungry for what actually nourishes me.

Jesus tells us that he is the "bread of life." He invites us to partake in the greatest meal, a feast, that we will ever experience. why settle for anything else?

Lord, forgive me for passing up the gift of your feast and settling for garbage that the world offers. give me a hunger that will only be satisfied by you. thank you for giving us Jesus as the bread of life.