A word about,… Hunger.

In recent days, I’ve been thinking a bit about the words of Jesus in Matthew 6. And a word picture comes to my mind.

Imagine two people who sit with plates of food before them. One is a young teenage girl. The other is a grandfather-type. Instead of enjoying their meals, they both push away from the table without eating. To anyone watching, they both might look as if they didn’t care for their food. But the stories of their lives could not be more different.

The young woman pushes her plate away out of fear; she suffers with a condition known as anorexia nervosa. She starves  her body because of a brokenness in her life driven by fear. Fear of gaining weight, fear of not measuring up, fear of being noticed. That fear wraps so tightly around her very soul that it clouds her view of herself, and even the God who loves her. She refuses food, even though she is dangerously hungry. But her abstinence is not a discipline; it is an eating disorder.

The grandfather at the table pushes away his plate of food, too, but for a different reason. He’s decided to enter a season of fasting. And fasting is not about his fear. It’s about his faith. He’s made a conscious choice; he chooses to shift his hunger from the body to the soul, to say with the psalmist, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:2).

Fasting intentionally creates a sort of “space to be hungry” and listen for God to speak. In the bible, Ezra fasted for direction. Joel called God’s people to fast as a sign of returning to God. Fasting is a chosen hunger. Anorexia is an unchosen condition, a bondage that whispers lies about who we really are. Fasting can feed the soul. Anorexia destroys the body. Fasting narrows the heart toward God. Anorexia turns the focus of a life inward, distorting truth, magnifying fear.

Both realities produce hunger. But one hunger leads to despair; the other leads to empowerment and provision.

I sense a deep hunger in our world today. How about you? Some of us human beings suffer from hunger as a result of life’s circumstance. We were born in a time and place of great deprivation and famine. A hunger called starvation. Some strugglers suffer from an invisible terror, deep inside of them where no one but God can see. That kind of hunger is a result of a lying mindset about who we are, and what God sees when he sees us. But there is another hunger. A hunger for God. Hungry people are everywhere I look. The haunting question for me is, “What can I do about that brokenness? What shall I do about my own broken places?

Perhaps a God-directed fast to help me develop more hunger is in order. Perhaps more appreciation for the words of Jesus I’ve been thinking about in Matthew 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6)