Happy Thanksgiving to all! Plans are underway for how we’ll gather with family to express gratitude for God’s gifts of abundance. Many of us brought our Hunger Heroes grocery bags, donating needed food for the Watts Powerhouse community.
This is what Jesus wants us to do. He knows we can be part of the overwhelming and complex problem of ending world hunger. The world currently produces enough food to feed every person on the planet. Still 1 in 10 people go to bed hungry every night. I am tempted to look the other way, to give up on a problem so big. There is a line in the story of Jesus feeding the hungry 5,000 that grips me: He says to his disciples, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat” [Matthew 14:16]. We are learning from Our Compassionate Savior, so we’ll wrestle a bit with Jesus’ role and ours, in living a compassionate life; and we’ll experience his empowering belief in our responsibility and ability to make a right-sized response to the problems in front of us. Read the story of the feast in Matthew 14:13-31.
