“Hunger months.”
My stomach dropped almost simultaneously as those two words left her tongue. I tossed the words around in my head again, trying to process them. Hunger months. In all life, I had never heard those two words together in that context. It was a foreign concept. Yet its powerful meaning left chills running down my spine. I felt my face go flush, almost as if I had seen a ghost. Yet the sudden shock wasn’t the result of fear, rather the result of a heart breaking concept I couldn’t fully grasp a complete understanding of.
“January,February and March,” she continued, “These are the main months when they experience hunger. December is when their food supply runs out, and harvest does not come until sometime in April.”
I couldn’t silence my head from spinning around in its own thoughts. You mean to tell me that each year, the whole country anxiously waits, as the food supply dwindles, and the dreaded months creep closer, reluctantly anticipating the starvation ahead? I couldn’t fathom such a thing. I tried to imagine what it must be like finding myself year after year in a season where my stomach talked more than my mouth and being unable to silence it. I couldn’t.
My brain just doesn’t understand.
I try hard, rehearsing these words over and over again.
Hunger months.
Hunger months.
Hunger months.
But each time I get lost. It’s like trying to describe a person you’ve never met, or a movie you’ve never seen. You just can’t.
And here I am, sitting in this village in the middle of the bush of Malawi, staring at these children with swollen bellies, witnessing first hand the malnutrition that I had only ever seen on National Geographic. I stand there, in the midst of all this suffering that has struck the community, and I still can’t comprehend the severity of these two words.
Hunger months.
This month I am given $4 a day to live off of, and even that is more than enough. I spent only half of that budget getting my first week of groceries. And yet, I gaze into the eyes of these people and see that is still more than what they have.
My heart sinks.
Then as subtle as the soft touch of a hand, but as powerful as a roaring lion, the Lord comforts me with his words,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
John 6:47-51
And that’s the hope.
That although there is suffering here, they get to look forward to a life without hunger.
Because with Jesus there are no hunger months. And while the bread here will temporarily fill their tummies, it won’t last forever. But Jesus will, and he is their bread to an everlasting life
