Hunger Is Fed

The word of this month for me is ‘hunger’. God’s been teaching me a lot about it, and surprisingly through many different means. The most obvious being our food outreaches where we load up a flat bed truck with 120 lb. bags of ‘pop’, an African staple, much like rice, only tastes more like Malt-o-Meal. A few church members at Arco-Iris and our crew of World Racers climb aboard the mounding piles and head to the villages where we’ll present the gift to the chief and dance to some kickin’ Afro-beats, preach the word through mega-speakers run on the generator we bring in and lay hands on people for healing. We’ll hold small babies, sometimes catching the moment where they really need to pee…all over you, and we’ll smile…knowing we do all things for Jesus. Ha.

  

The real smile comes when you realize that you’re surrounded by hungry people, yes, physically hungry—some probably haven’t eaten much for days or weeks now. But in their eyes is a hunger not just for food, but for something much deeper. A hunger I resonate with because I want more too. I have all the food I could eat because I have the means of getting to it, but that hunger within is a whole new thing to desire.

I’ve seen fantastic things at these outreaches—things I have only ever read about before. Healing. Mass salvations. Restoration. The spiritual realm knocking doors with the natural. It’s all real. It all happens. When you see it each day it becomes almost normal. And so it should be if we truly are to live as spiritual beings. But to me even all these things couldn’t compare with the hunger I saw. The hunger to me was something truly extraordinary.

As I held small children at the orphanage in Morrumbala I also saw a hunger here. Those piercing little eyes that seer right into your soul and cry for love, for a touch, for affirmation. Am I lovely? Will you hold me? Will you take time for me? The hunger for them was for relationship. For something more than a simple monetary donation their way. Sure, they liked the new clothes we bought them while we were there and of course they whole-heartedly sucked down those oranges we sometimes brought in the afternoon for a snack. Never mind it cost us a whopping 40 cents to give 50 orphans an orange each day. It wasn’t the orange that fed their hunger, it was our love.

    

Believe it or not I even found hunger within my team of World Racers. Maybe it doesn’t shock you as much as it shocked me or maybe I’ve just been a little jaded out here in the thick of things. Perhaps I was taking my teammates too much for granted that I didn’t see the hunger in them like I had before. I guess it took God opening my eyes to what hunger really looks like. We’ve had some hard talks this month—really exposing some lies, speaking some truth, and trying to do all of it in love…even when it doesn’t feel so nice. We’ve been meeting as girls in the little round room at World Vision and truly being intentional and real. It’s good. It hurts. I see now in all of them a hunger. A hunger for intimacy, for true interdependence and trust in each other and our Lord.  It’s a beautiful thing.

My favorite quote from a 20-year old with a lot of wisdom here at Iris is simply that “Hunger is fed.” Mozambique stirred in me a hunger for more, more of God, more love for His people and more intimacy in my relationships. I have this hunger now and I’m not letting go of it. I’ve learned that hunger isn’t really a bad thing like I’ve so often thought of it before. God wants more for us and why should we not have a hunger for the things He desires to give? I long for fulfillment, for all that God has in my life and I know that my hunger now can only be fed. How I look forward to all that may entail!