Lent: Food

This week’s fast was from food. Simple foods were the only things I was allowed to eat. My diet consisted of rice, beans, bread, peanut butter and later in the week I added in chicken. Catch up on the conversation and the past three weeks dealing with resources, money, and clothing.

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Everything hurts and I’m always hungry. All week my stomach has been turning inside out. No matter how much beans, rice or carbs I shove down my throat I’m never satisfied. My body is being starved from the nutrients it has become dependent on.

Sure, I’m meeting my calorie needs, but I’m starving.

During the week, I had a dear friend schedule a breakfast date. She was aware of my fast and wanted to support and enter into the journey I was walking. She debated on what to make for the meal. At first, I couldn’t understand this, seeing that there really were only five ingredients to pick from and eating most of them on their own was a little strange.

But this was her issue, she wanted to bless me, because Christ’s love is extravagant and it tastes a lot better than some dang brown rice. At the same time she wanted to support me in my fast and help me continue on the path that I was on. Her last thought rocked my world.

As she was dwelling on the issue of poverty, she realized it is not an issue that is immune to our hometowns. American poverty looks far different than African poverty. After praying through all of this, I ate my rice burrito and then we took all of our change and traveled to the nearest McDonalds and purchased her breakfast off the dollar menu. She ate McDonalds because that is what a typical homeless person would be given for breakfast.

This is the funny thing about American poverty, they may eat, but they never eat well.

Think about the last time you gave food to someone in the homeless community. It was probably was off the dollar menu from a fast food chain. There is a high chance it was fried in grease, dripping in fat and lacking all nutrients. Most likely it was something you would not dare digest yourself.

And this is what I’ve been learning, we must stop half-ass feeding our neighbor.

In his book Under the Overpass, Mike Yankoski tells a story of early Christian in Rome. A famine fell upon the city and early Christians responded by starving so they might feed their pagan neighbors. C.S. Lew says, “If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.”

The dollar menu does not pinch. The dollar menu is an easy way out of the second greatest command. Our brothers and sisters are starving, their bodies are decaying far faster than they should, and all we seem to offer is a meager 99 cent hamburger. This is the last thing their bodies need. We have not let our giving pinch us, yet instead we have given just enough to check it off our list

We should be clearing out our pantries and bringing down bag fulls of food to our brothers and sisters. We should bring watermelons by the truck full, pounds of berries, sparkling water, the finest stakes in town, millions of apples and the best dang salad we’ve ever tasted down to our friends in need. Instead we have settled.

We have failed our neighbor, because our love for our own bellies is far too great. Like my dear friend reminded me, Christ’s love is extravagant and gives all. In light of this truth, we should be hosting feast for our neighbor instead of shopping off the dollar menu.

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Abby Fennema is a junior attending John Brown University. Her passion for story telling and the written word is what propelled her to help create The Millstone Blog. She believes everyone has a story worth sharing and desires to enable others to speak out. Her favorite things are road trips, camping, and the Colorado mountains.