During Evening Prayer we pray,
Lord, You have always given
bread for the coming day;
and though I am poor,
today I believe.
And lately, Kim and I have been praying this prayer before dinner,
Bless, O Lord,
this food we are about to eat,
and we pray You, O God,
that it may be good for our body and soul,
and if there is any poor creature
hungry or thirsty walking the road,
may God send them in to us
so that we can share the food with them,
just as Christ shares His gifts with all of us.
It is becoming more and more difficult to live with this disconnect between our will and our reality. We honestly would be willing to open our apartment to anyone who walked by hungry. But the reality is, we would never know. And while we are more than happy to have sent a check to Second Harvest, we would also like to learn how to open our doors to our neighbors.
Because there is still a difference between feeding 5,000 who are hungry again the next day, and sharing a meal with others, in remembrance of Christ’s body broken for us. Neither go away hungry, but only the later go away fed.
Update:
After writing this post, I read our meditation for the day, and feel an even deeper need to find the hungry in our neighborhood.
Seeing the Miracle of Multiplication
The opposite of a scarcity mentality is an abundancy mentality. With an abundancy mentality we say: “There is enough for everyone, more than enough: food, knowledge, love … everything.” With this mind-set we give away whatever we have, to whomever we meet. When we see hungry people we give them food. When we meet ignorant people we share our knowledge; when we encounter people in need of love, we offer them friendship and affection and hospitality and introduce them to our family and friends.
When we live with this mind-set, we will see the miracle that what we give away multiplies: food, knowledge, love … everything. There will even be many leftovers.
[ via Henri Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey ]
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