You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
It is ironic to talk about hunger on a day when many of us will stuff ourselves with pancakes and all the fixings at our Shrove Tuesday suppers. I confess I'm not big on fasting or deprivation of any kind. I never knew anyone who fasted regularly until I got to know more Muslims. I am amazed at how many of my Muslim friends fast during Ramadan, even those who aren’t particularly observant or active the rest of the year. For thirty days, from sun-up to sundown, they refrain from eating, drinking, even water, having sex, gossiping. They are more attentive to prayer and hospitality and charity and the needs of people around them. It’s extraordinary how normative it is for many Muslims.
The fast Jesus took on during his forty days in the wilderness was even more stringent. We’re told he his fast was total, 24/7, as he prayed and did spiritual battle with the devil: He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Why did Jesus refrain from eating? People who fast regularly find it focuses them spiritually. Yes, the hunger can be distracting, but after a while it fades and one becomes more aware of what’s happening around us and inside us. Those who fast for spiritual reasons find they become more attuned to what God is saying or doing as their focus on feeding their appetites recedes.
After forty days, though, Jesus is ravenous, and this is when the devil tries to tempt him to misuse his spiritual power to create food for himself. He approaches when he thinks Jesus is vulnerable, and starts by tempting Jesus to doubt his identity as Son of God. “If you are…” Guess what? The Tempter hasn’t changed his tactics. He still approaches us in those areas where we feel depleted or deprived, where we’re vulnerable to scarcity-thinking, where we can be more easily convinced that we deserve to be full. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing? Why should we want for anything?
Yes, God is – and that is exactly what we need to remember in those times when we’re tempted to take what has not been given us, or more than is good for us, or manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we need not look elsewhere.
We don’t have to stay hungry, but we thrive best when we look to God for blessing. Sometimes being hungry is the best way to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label hunger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hunger. Show all posts
9-19-22 - The Feasts Around Us
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I was part of a group that helped start a residential school in Western Kenya called the Nambale Magnet School. Initially designed as a place that would provide home and education for children orphaned by AIDS in a region that provided no services for thousands such children, it also includes fee-paying students who have family support. The need-based calculus for how the indigent, “supported learners" are chosen, though, is heart-breaking. The many candidates for limited places at the school are vetted by the social worker, who visits each village and assesses the needs. Many of the students come from “child-headed” families. If a child has one parent living, shelter at night, and/or gets at least two meals a day, the place will go to someone with even less.*
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores…
We may sometimes feel like that beggar, aware of what we do not have. In terms of global poverty, though, we are the rich man, feasting sumptuously every day. In fact, we feast so much that we cannot consume it all – some 25 percent of food in American households is thrown out, uneaten. (Add in commercial foods, and we as a nation waste 40 percent of the food we buy, while millions go hungry.)
I do not wish us to begin the week feeling sad and ashamed. We can rejoice in our good fortune. I suggest, though, that we acknowledge how wealthy we are and take the time and mindful presence to truly enjoy the feasts we have each day.
We are invited to share out of our abundance, not out of guilt or a teeth-gritted sense of justice. Our tables are a place to begin to cultivate that awareness of abundance that is real for most of us. We might move from giving thanks for each item on our plates and where it came from, to naming other areas of abundance in our lives. Do you have time for a break at work? Can you exercise? Do you have friends? Leisure activities? Memories and dreams? All of these are kinds of abundance to be celebrated.
It’s easy to approach this parable with a sense of guilt. But that often shuts us down and prevents us from opening ourselves to participating in God’s reign of justice. If we can approach it in gratitude for what we have, we just might be able to see how to better share our feasts so that everyone has one. There is enough. As we are released in grace, we release our resources in love.
*We estimate it costs about $1200 a year to support the indigent students, including tuition, clothes, school and medical supplies and food. If you’d like to join me in providing annually for one such student, please email me or click here.
I was part of a group that helped start a residential school in Western Kenya called the Nambale Magnet School. Initially designed as a place that would provide home and education for children orphaned by AIDS in a region that provided no services for thousands such children, it also includes fee-paying students who have family support. The need-based calculus for how the indigent, “supported learners" are chosen, though, is heart-breaking. The many candidates for limited places at the school are vetted by the social worker, who visits each village and assesses the needs. Many of the students come from “child-headed” families. If a child has one parent living, shelter at night, and/or gets at least two meals a day, the place will go to someone with even less.*
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores…
We may sometimes feel like that beggar, aware of what we do not have. In terms of global poverty, though, we are the rich man, feasting sumptuously every day. In fact, we feast so much that we cannot consume it all – some 25 percent of food in American households is thrown out, uneaten. (Add in commercial foods, and we as a nation waste 40 percent of the food we buy, while millions go hungry.)
I do not wish us to begin the week feeling sad and ashamed. We can rejoice in our good fortune. I suggest, though, that we acknowledge how wealthy we are and take the time and mindful presence to truly enjoy the feasts we have each day.
We are invited to share out of our abundance, not out of guilt or a teeth-gritted sense of justice. Our tables are a place to begin to cultivate that awareness of abundance that is real for most of us. We might move from giving thanks for each item on our plates and where it came from, to naming other areas of abundance in our lives. Do you have time for a break at work? Can you exercise? Do you have friends? Leisure activities? Memories and dreams? All of these are kinds of abundance to be celebrated.
It’s easy to approach this parable with a sense of guilt. But that often shuts us down and prevents us from opening ourselves to participating in God’s reign of justice. If we can approach it in gratitude for what we have, we just might be able to see how to better share our feasts so that everyone has one. There is enough. As we are released in grace, we release our resources in love.
*We estimate it costs about $1200 a year to support the indigent students, including tuition, clothes, school and medical supplies and food. If you’d like to join me in providing annually for one such student, please email me or click here.
3-1-22 - Hunger
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I’m not big on fasting. I don’t like deprivation, even when it is self-induced. I never knew anyone who fasted regularly until I got to know more Muslims. I am astonished at how many of my Muslim friends fast during Ramadan, even those who aren’t particularly observant or active the rest of the year. For thirty days, from sun-up to sundown, they refrain from eating, drinking, even water, having sex, gossiping. They are more attentive to prayer and hospitality and charity and the needs of people around them. It’s extraordinary how normative it is for many Muslims.
The fast Jesus took on during his forty days in the wilderness was even more stringent. We’re told he his fast was total, 24/7, as he prayed and did spiritual battle with the devil: He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Why did Jesus refrain from eating? People who fast regularly find it focuses them spiritually. Yes, the hunger can be distracting, but after a while it fades and one becomes more aware of what’s happening around and inside. Those who fast for spiritual reasons find they become more attuned to what God is saying or doing as their focus on feeding their appetites recedes to the background.
After forty days, though, Jesus is ravenous, and this is when the devil tries to tempt him to misuse his spiritual power to create food for himself. He approaches when he thinks Jesus is vulnerable, and starts by tempting Jesus to doubt his identity as Son of God. “If you are…”
It should not surprise us that the Tempter hasn’t changed his tactics. He still approaches us in those areas where we feel depleted or deprived, where we’re vulnerable to scarcity-thinking, where we can be more easily convinced that we deserve to be full. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing?
Yes - and that is exactly what we need to remember in those times when we’re tempted to take what has not been given us, or more than is good for us, or manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we need not look elsewhere.
We don’t have to stay hungry, but we thrive best when we look to God for blessing. Sometimes being hungry is the best way to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not.
I’m not big on fasting. I don’t like deprivation, even when it is self-induced. I never knew anyone who fasted regularly until I got to know more Muslims. I am astonished at how many of my Muslim friends fast during Ramadan, even those who aren’t particularly observant or active the rest of the year. For thirty days, from sun-up to sundown, they refrain from eating, drinking, even water, having sex, gossiping. They are more attentive to prayer and hospitality and charity and the needs of people around them. It’s extraordinary how normative it is for many Muslims.
The fast Jesus took on during his forty days in the wilderness was even more stringent. We’re told he his fast was total, 24/7, as he prayed and did spiritual battle with the devil: He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Why did Jesus refrain from eating? People who fast regularly find it focuses them spiritually. Yes, the hunger can be distracting, but after a while it fades and one becomes more aware of what’s happening around and inside. Those who fast for spiritual reasons find they become more attuned to what God is saying or doing as their focus on feeding their appetites recedes to the background.
After forty days, though, Jesus is ravenous, and this is when the devil tries to tempt him to misuse his spiritual power to create food for himself. He approaches when he thinks Jesus is vulnerable, and starts by tempting Jesus to doubt his identity as Son of God. “If you are…”
It should not surprise us that the Tempter hasn’t changed his tactics. He still approaches us in those areas where we feel depleted or deprived, where we’re vulnerable to scarcity-thinking, where we can be more easily convinced that we deserve to be full. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing?
Yes - and that is exactly what we need to remember in those times when we’re tempted to take what has not been given us, or more than is good for us, or manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we need not look elsewhere.
We don’t have to stay hungry, but we thrive best when we look to God for blessing. Sometimes being hungry is the best way to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not.
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