Today is World Hunger Sunday, designated to call our
attention to the needs of the hungry of the world. We know that there are
many kinds of hunger. Frederick Buechner made the following observations in
The Longing for Home: Recollections and Reflections.
We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be
loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just
to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed
others these things because they too are starving for them.
He went on to say,
When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as
ourselves, it was not just for our neighbors’ sakes that he commanded
it, but for our own sakes as well. Not to help find some way to feed the
children who are starving to death is to have some precious part of who we
are starve to death with them. Not to give of ourselves to the human
beings we know who may be starving not for food but for what we have in
our hearts to nourish them with is to be, ourselves, diminished and
crippled as human beings.
As we remember the hungry today, may the love of Jesus
Christ touch our hearts in such a way that we will be moved to reach out to
the hungry and sense his love feeding our spiritual hunger.
President Emeritus Wallace B. Smith
