Hungry for God: Biblical Reflections on FoodSample

Food is Enough (Micah 4:1-5) We live in a world in which there is enough food to feed everyone, and yet one in eight women, men and children go to bed hungry every night, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (footnote: FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, p.9); 2.3 million children die each year from malnutrition in developing countries (footnote: Save the Children, A Life Free From Hunger, 2012); and women are more likely to go hungry compared to men. At the same time, around 500 million adults are obese and 40 million children under the age of five are overweight. (footnote: World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/ ) It is with these figures ringing in our heads that we read the beautiful description in today’s reading of what God intends the world to look like: a time when there will be no more conflict and people will follow God’s good laws and walk in his paths. In the midst of this we are assured that ‘everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig-tree’. It is an inspirational picture of balance and enough: a depiction of contentment and security. Our modern food system is implacably opposed to such a picture. It creates bigger and bigger farms and places control in the hands of fewer and fewer companies. As followers of Jesus we want to work for Micah 4:4, for a world in which the massive inequalities that exist between us are eradicated and each person can be in control of the food they eat and produce. Action: There is enough food in the world for everyone, and yet 1 in 8 go to bed hungry every night. Tearfund is part of a big campaign in the UK to tackle hunger in 2013, and you can be a part of it. Have a look at the Tearfund website and see what you could do today. www.tearfund.org/if