Hunger Pangs

What is the longest you have ever gone without eating? My church youth group did a few 24 hour fasts when I was in high school. I know there were some training exercises in the army that left me without food for a while. But none of that compares to someone who is starving.

To most Americans hunger and starvation are unfathomable, we view them as problems that other parts of the world face. We do not see the the nearly 15% of Americans (including 16 million children) who are not sure where their next meal will come from.

If I am hungry I can go to the kitchen and get some food. If I don't like what we have I can get in my car and drive to the store and select from thousands of choices of affordable foods. I do not know hunger.

But Jesus tells us we do not live by bread alone, that we need the Word of God just as much as we need earthly food. Yet so often we do not get fed what we need to survive. Few of us have gone more than 24 hours without earthly food but how long have we gone without the Bread of Life?

I know that my soul has starved in seasons of my life. I have been malnourished or lived only on spiritual junk food. My spirit was unfed.

But even then I often did not know hunger. Starvation was still a problem on the other side of the world. One of the devil's greatest tricks is to convince us that we're full when we are starving, to let us wither away all the while thinking we are fine.

Now I pray for hunger pangs. I pray to be ravenous for God's Word. He is all around me and if I am hungry for more there are churches, music, books, and thousands of other choices of ways to be feed. I do not need to know hunger, but pray for an insatiable appetite.