If you've never been hungry, I'm talking about really hungry you have no idea what it means to be hungry. I'm not talking about the time you were sooooo hungry that your stomach growled endlessly until you finally had to pull up to the drive through window and pay for your Happy and Fat Meal – BIGGIE size, no doubt. No, I'm talking about the kind of hunger we look away from when one of those stinking has-been celebrities come on the screen with their arms around a little boy or girl that you can see every bone of the rib cage, yet their stomachs are so bloated it's almost sickening. That kind of hunger. I admit, I can't watch those kind of infomercials, I just can't. I don't mind sending my money, just don't make me watch the suffering these children are going through, I can't t take it.
If I ever commit a really big crime, that would be the easiest way the cops could get me to confess. Not water-boarding, stretching me out on a rack, or even holding a gun to my head. Stick me in front of a TV set, super glue my eyelids open and force me to watch Sally Struthers with those precious and starving little children and I'll confess to anything if only I don't have to watch. Did you know that again today, nearly 20,000 children around the world under the age of eighteen will die, and almost all of them will die from starvation or disease from malnutrition, yet we declare to be an advanced civilization. I question that myself. We don't think about stuff like that mainly because it doesn't effect us personally, but trust me there's going to be many moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents that will have their hearts broken today by the loss of a child. So, what should we do?
There were many a night as a child I went to bed hungry as I recall. No, it wasn't because my mother was neglectful, or we were that darn poor. It was because I either failed to heed the sixteen warnings I had heard to settle down and quit fighting with my brothers and sisters, or it was because I didn't like what was on the table. Back then, sending a kid to bed without dinner was a reasonable option for parents, probably still needs to be today. If your snot-nosed kid wouldn't mind - send him to bed without supper. If he doesn't want to eat Spaghetti, FINE - send him to bed without eating. He'll learn! Either get with the program, or go to bed hungry, it's your choice big boy!
I remember several times laying awake in bed, the sun still not fully set, listening to all the hustle and bustle from the other rooms and wishing like heck that I had done as I was told. The cries of my stomach would get the best of me and I'd beg for forgiveness, regardless if I were sincere or not. I just wanted to eat and it didn't matter if it was something I didn't like, I just wanted to eat. Today, that's just-cause for D.H.R. to send a SWAT team into a home to take out these dangerous parents for the hideous crimes of making a child do as they're told. In today's world a good old fashioned butt-busting or sending the kids to bed without dinner has been replaced with Time-Out and costly therapy sessions. Even today the Time-Out strategy is under attack by those that believe it's too cruel. Hey, it's not limited to just parents, look at last year's ousting of the University of Texas Tech Head Football Coach. He put a player in timeout and the young man's dad, (a popular sports commentator) cried and complained so much the school ended up firing the coach. I remember speculating that the dad probably should have taken a belt to the boy's behind a few times long before he ever got to college and maybe that kind of thing wouldn't have happen.
But anyway, let me get back on track here! Geez, me and my ramblings....
As I was saying, as a kid I didn't go to bed hungry because of a lack of food as do the helpless children in many parts of the world do every night, I got hungry as a result of my own stubbornness and spite. Sure, there were a couple of times we got near the point of no food, as my mom did the best she could raising six kids and an alcoholic husband, but we make it, just like many of you made it through some rough times as a family. That's life!
As many of you know I spent the first six years of this decade living in a small camper at a campground just off the interstate near my home town. Truthfully, I did that mainly because I was completely broke during those times, and couldn't even afford an apartment. Even then I had to scrape by every week just to make ends meet, and many times they didn't quite meet. Yet, because God used some very special people in my life at that time I was able to keep a going until the light bulb finally came on. In the beginning it was somewhat torturous living in the campground. It wasn't one of those parks tucked away in a national park or something, no it was withing a rocks throw of I-75. I simply wanted peace and quietness, yet all I got was the constant coming and goings of those pulling through for a one night stand on their way to somewhere fun, like Disney World or the beach. Soon though I began to see the beauty in the opportunity the place afforded me to meet so very different, yet wonderful people. Somewhere around 2004 there was a couple from Oklahoma that parked their much bigger and more expensive travel-trailer behind mine for about six months or so, and we became friends to some degree or another prior to them heading home.
Though I can't remember their names, I certainly recall the book the lady gave me to read, as it was a self-written story of her growing up as the oldest child to a father who had lost his wife at an early age. I passed the book onto another friend, and no longer can quote to you from it, yet I remember in vivid detail the chapter she wrote about cooking up a couple of possums for Thanksgiving, simply cause that was all they had to eat. I recall how she confessed about the pride she had from seeing the delight on her father's face when he came in from chopping wood, or whatever he was doing, and smelled the feast she had prepared. I love meeting folks like her! Living in a campground, even alongside the interstate sure has it's perks, trust me! She shared how they were hungry, and it was a bitter Oklahoma winter some fifty years ago, yet they made the best of what they had by eating a couple of possums, being thankful for what God had provided.
I think that's something we often fail to do in our hour of plenty, with our self-excused sin of gluttony. A few years back as I read Tommy Tenney's “God Chasers” the first time, I remember how relieved and excited I was to hear someone else communicate (which I wasn't able to) the same feelings I had deep inside of me – a hunger for more of God. Tenney hit the nail on the head for me, and from that day forward I've been able to at least explain to others what I'm hungry for. B.G.C. (God Chasers I was like a six month old baby yet to speak. All I could do was cry when I was hungry, cry when my diaper was full of poop, cry when I needed to be held. A.G.C. (you got it) after God Chasers I could at least say; Dougie wants a cookie, and me make poopy.
Reading the scriptures you get a real taste for those that had a true hunger for God. King David, thirsted mightily after more of God, as we read how his heart longed for more God as a deer pants for water. Moses sought His presence always, in all his coming and goings. Peter so desperately wanted Jesus's attention he often made a fool out of himself. Many times in the New Testament we find how John, the disciple needed Christ's love so badly he would rest his head on Jesus' chest even. Hunger may take on many forms, the results are all the same. Hunger will make a person do strange things, like steal, kill, lie and cheat. Hunger for healing, hunger for freedom, hunger for forgiveness creates a desperate feeling in one's soul. A mom or dad seeing their children starving will do almost anything to feed them, this I've seen first-hand. Hunger for God makes a man do many a strange thing also, yet unfortunately so often our hunger for more of Him, has become over-shadowed by our growing dependency on what the world puts on the table for us.
I suspect there's many a person who goes to church every time the doors open sincerely hungry to experience God, the one true God, yet leave so desperately empty despite the best efforts of today's wind-up monkeys singing, playing, and preaching on stage. So many of today's churches are just as empty of God as is the lives of some of it's best front row sitting members. An absence of God, an absence of a daily, moment-by-moment relationship with God is the greatest hunger we face today as a people, I believe. We focus our attention on french fries and cups of espresso, yet our body needs vegetables, and nutrients to grow, to stay healthy, to survive. We lie awake at night craving a double cheeseburger and one of those really thick chocolate milkshakes from down the street, yet what our heart needs is something so much different.
We need God in a mighty way to satisfy the hunger we have, but so often we give ourselves over to the settlement of something far less. It's as if we've gone to the store and spent ten bucks on the best frozen pizza the grocer has to offer. We then take it home, heat it up to just right temp where the cheese is dripping down into the oven's base, (which makes my wife mad, by the way) we take it out, slice it into four or five pieces depending on how much were willing to share with others, then we toss it in the trash and eat that piece of round cardboard the pizza was packaged with. Crazy huh! But, that's exactly how many of our church experiences are today. We get there with all the juices flowing, our taste-buds standing at attention with full of expectation, then we find our self sitting in the pews gnawing away at the cardboard of a watered down version of the Word. Better yet, we stand as we sing halfheartedly a song which was placed on the finely crafted bulletin to show off the talents of the singer. Where's the real worship, where's the real praise, where's the real sharing of God's word cries out the really hungry? For those that want him the most, (the really hungry) the problem often isn't nearly as much the church's fault as it is with their misplaced idea as to where to find food.
So much of what we eat today in this land of plenty is bad for us, and it's not just coming from the fast-food joints, but the churches as well. We settle, or better yet demand fast service, instant results, immediate needs being met and have forsaken the quality of the experiences. We spend our entire week hungry for God, yet we don't pray, we don't praise, we don't confess with our words. We simply show up Sunday morning with a clean shirt on expecting the Praise / Worship team to serve up a piping hot bowl of Christ-o-licious with buttered toast on the side and a tall glass of ice cold milk. It's no wonder we get disappointed so often! We just don't get it sometimes, and for the most part I believe it's because we don't know, or have forgotten what it's like to be hungry, I mean really hungry.
Maybe what we need is to be sent to bed without supper a few nights to remind us of what hunger really feels like. Perhaps that's what's beginning to happen here in our country? I don't know, but I do know this, we as a people, as a society need a lot more than ten minutes in the time-out corner. We need to once again recognize the fact that our hunger, our true hunger can only be satisfied by God, and God alone. I believe we / I need to fall on our knees, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ash, ask for forgiveness, fast, and then pray God quenches our hunger with His presence. We can continue to go to bed at night with our bellies so full they're ready to bust with appeasement, denial, false idolatry, self-centeredness, hatred, blame, religion, etc, (as I could go on forever with the list) - yet we'll continue to awake in the morning hungry once more. A dying man crawling across the desert's floor can easily be convinced by the illusions of his mind to drink the sand, but soon he recognizes the sand for what it is. We'll remain hungry until we eat the food designed to meet every need we have, and of this I am convinced!
I believe there's a lot of starving children in African and Asia that would love to eat a possum this day, thus living to see another day, but let's be honest here there's no way you or I would. This serves effectively as a great analogy to show the difference between being a people that is really, really hungry versus a society who has so much they can pick and choose what they'll eat, or leave laying dead on the side of the road. I don't know about you, but as for me, I'm simply tired of eating the cardboard tray, I personally need to change my eating habits. Some of you know what I'm talking about, you hunger also for God and the more hungry we become the more tempted we are to eat the offerings of the world. We need to pray for each other that we continue to hold to the truth that our hunger can only be satisfied by Him and Him alone. We need to pray for the only true Happy Meal available!
Oh yeah, can you BIGGIE size that please. Doug
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