Food Comes from God; He Wants Us to Pray that It Be Distributed
Friday, April 4
Psalm 145:15-16
The eyes of all look to You, And You give them their food in due time.
You open Your handAnd satisfy the desire of every living thing.
A member of Trinity who is in her last year of med school has returned to Ghana for a second visit. Hospitals in Ghana have very limited resources for medical care. The per capita GDP in Ghana is about $7000 per United Nations data for 2021. So we may have relative disinterest in our correct assumption that a shortage of basic medical devices and care confronts Ghana. But when someone gives personal testimony about observing very bare bones medical devices in an emergency room and describes individuals’ struggles, we are moved by compassion.
I had no idea what patients in Ghana faced until I heard the stories. And, honestly, I did not “care.” What do I mean by that? Because I had – until the story of the med student’s visit – no direct knowledge of the hospital situation in Ghana, I did not care simply because I did not know. Burundi was not on my radar screen, either. I did not think about the plight of people there to get adequate food until I saw a schematic listing them near the bottom of a chart of calorie intake worldwide. People in Burundi consume about 1750 calories a day; in the US it is closer to 3700 calories a day. Still, I was looking at a number on a chart, not listening to a personal account at that point.
Prayer is usually kick-started in passion and frequency when we have direct knowledge of a person or a story that tugs at our heart. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a petition which does pray that bread be given to “us,” including the people of Ghana and Burundi. If I don’t know, I often do not care. The 4th petition in the Lord’s Prayer is somewhat sterile until I hear the stories of hunger.
One advantage of being involved in Feed My Starving Children is that we hear those individual stories. So when we pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” I now try to think of the individual hungry people in the pronoun “us.”
David was a shepherd in the breadbasket that was Bethlehem. The Lord inspired him to write many Psalms, one of which includes this reminder of God as Provider. God has rained bread from heaven, and Christ is the Bread of Life. We should remember that God’s “open hand” involves both our own folded hands in prayer and our giving hands as His “Body, the Church.” God uses “us” to be His givers to the “us” in Ghana and Burundi.
PRAYER: Father, I am well fed in body and soul. Reveal to me and others the hurting people behind numbers and amorphous assumptions. As Your Body, the Church, may we be empowered to learn and give generously, in a way like You did, and still do. We pray for the people in Ghana and Burundi, that we would help them get what they need to simply live. We pray that You would provide abundantly for their soul and body. We Pray in the Name of the Bread from Heaven. Amen.