The Face of Hunger

I grew up pretty much on the poor side of things. We never had enough, always pushed and struggled for that last dime. But in all my years of wandering, i've never gone hungry.I mean, there have been days when we didn't have enough. Weeks even. And if I had to count the number of times I ate ketchup sandwiches or ramen noodles as a kid, my counter would break. But the food was always there. I have, however, SEEN hunger. It's something you see not in the protruding ribs, the lean look, but in the eyes. eyes that have lost hope. Eyes that have resigned themselves to their fate and plead for death to take them. While you can't see hope in someone's eyes, the absence of it is glaring, powerful, convicting. Yesterday, when filling up with gas, I saw that look. Not in the eyes of a human, no, but in the eyes of a dog. A scrawny pit bull who approached, not with any sort of aggression, or even friendliness, but with just a little bit of hope that somehow we could offer something.Interestingly enough, we had just purchased dog food for our own little mutt. I don't believe in coincidences; what we call coincidence is often God's way of remaining incognito. I sent Murron around to the back of the van with a small dish to dish out some food for the dog. It wasn't much, but it was something. I stayed put; the dog went to the back of the van. Somehow, she knew what we were doing; she walked to the back of the van and sat while her food was dished out. That stirred me to thinking about that and the other things I do. While I am anything but a socialist, the fact that I believe powerfully in my responsibility as a Christian to others has caused me to be labelled as such. It's a label I hate, because it is anything but who I am. I could describe who I am, but I dont want to point to myself, I want to be, as Rich Mullins' biographer described him, "an arrow pointing to Heaven". I want, as Mullins so frequently urged his fans, to "be God's" (in the possessive). I believe the reason many believe that God is not there in times of trouble is because we, as Christians, do not act.And that is not about any global economic system. It is not about the US, the state of Texas, the City of McLean, or even the people on my street. It is about how I respond to the call, how I respond to the pleading eyes of the hungry, the cries of the homeless, and the needs of the broken, the sick, and the lonely. I am slowly realizing the reason that my ministry has never taken me to a pulpit is so that I do not need to sufer the politics of the pulpit. If I march as I marched Saturday, I am responsible to God alone, and not a church board who will be steered by their own agendas.So if you want to call me a socialist, so be it. Your labels do not define me. But if you are, indeed a Christian, I urge you to search the Scriptures and ask yourself if there is something you need to be doing that you are postponing. .