Hungry...

Hunger.  I've known it.  When I've run 14 or 15 miles, it has taken a couple of days to make up the calories I've lost.   When I get busy working in the garden and lose track of time, my stomach lets me know that I have missed a meal.  My children have known hunger.  "Mom, I'm hungry."  "I'm Starving!!  We don't have ANYTHING to eat!"  Those are words I know too well.  Sometimes, I have even chosen to be hungry...to lose weight, to "save my appetite" for an anticipated feast, or as a spiritual discipline.

Hunger.  I do not know it at all.  Not one time have I come home from a run to find the pantry bare.  I have only to decide which foods will best fuel my recovery.  And when my children say "We don't have anything to eat."  what they mean is, "None of my preferred food options are currently represented in our home."  That's all.  Not one time EVER have I had to look into those precious blue eyes and say, "I'm sorry baby.  We don't have ANYTHING to eat."  Not once.  EVER.  What would that be like? 

Today.  TODAY, millions of mothers just like me will look into precious blue, or brown, or green eyes and say that very thing.  "I'm sorry, baby.  We don't have ANYTHING to eat."  How must it feel to watch your baby's body waste away a little at a time?  ...to know the desperate void of not even being able to see a day in the future when there will be food?  No, "If we can just make it until Monday..." 

We are in the midst of a Global Food CRISIS.  Just how serious is it?  The New York Times said this:

"Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

"Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

"Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said."

How did we get here?  An article in Time magazine gives the following explanation:

"...One reason: billions of people are buying ever-greater quantities of food — especially in booming China and India, where many have stopped growing their own food and now have the cash to buy a lot more of it. Increasing meat consumption, for example, has helped drive up demand for grain, and with it the price.

"There are other problems too. The spike in oil prices, which hit $103 per barrel in recent days, has pushed up fertilizer prices, as well as the cost of trucking food from farms to local markets and shipping it abroad. Then there is climate change. Harvests have been seriously disrupted by freak weather, including prolonged droughts in Australia and southern Africa, floods in West Africa, and this past winter's deep frost in China and record-breaking warmth in northern Europe.

"The push to produce biofuels as an alternative to hydrocarbons is further straining food supplies, especially in the U.S., where generous subsidies for ethanol have lured thousands of farmers away from growing crops for food...."

What can I do?  To begin with, I can pray. I can pray every day.  And, on June 25th I can join thousands of others around the world in a day of fasting and prayer for the hungry.  I can also give.  Compassion International, an organization that has been meeting the physical needs of hurting people for years, has organized a Global Food Crisis Fund with proceeds going directly into feeding those hit hardest by the current crisis.  Finally, I can inform.  I can make sure my friends, my church, and my community know about the crisis and about what they can do to help.  Won't you join us?

"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it,
       when it is in your power to act.

Do not say to your neighbor,
       "Come back later; I'll give it tomorrow"—
       when you now have it with you."

Proverbs 3:27-28

Comments

[Carolyn F]

Well said. I'm working my way thru the compassion bloggers to read what has been said. Thanks for sharing!

[Becky]

This post is excellent. The pictures make it even more heart wrenching. Thanks for what you wrote.