(Delmont Record – 2/13/2015)

Feeding Starving Children

[Jesus said,] ⁵¹“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…⁵³Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

This week we celebrate the beginning of the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, Lent has always been a time of increased attention to repentance through prayer and fasting. While most Christians today pray, I would venture to guess that a pretty high percentage of Christians rarely fast – and maybe aren’t even aware of the various methods of or reasons for fasting. Historically, fasting usually entails the giving up of food for either a prescribed number of days or for a period of the day. Some fast only during daylight hours, some for a week or even a month or more, others fast by giving up certain foods or even activities for the entire period of Lent or on certain days during Lent. But in all these methods they main reason for doing so is a reminder that the most important needs we have are not physical. Eating well is not nearly as important to our well-being as being spiritually fed and well-nourished. Yet, for most of us, not eating for even one meal is something we must decide to do consciously, and even then it is difficult for us, however, skipping times of prayer and worship is done oftentimes without a thought.

Our world seems to be growing more and more obsessed with healthy diets and nutrition. And this seems to be even more true when it comes to our children. School lunch programs have received a lot of attention for trying to limit the amount of calories and increase the nutritional value of the food we serve children at school. At yet, at these same schools, we don’t give a second thought to spiritually either starving our children completely or feeding them the “junk food” spirituality of the world. Our culture is starving spiritually, and the level of spiritual starvation in our young people is appalling. And as we see more and more consequences of this depravation, the answer for most people is to starve them further.

It’s time for us to start to take the words of Jesus above seriously. He alone is the Bread of Life; He alone can offer us the refreshment of True Drink. Our children are starving; they are dying every day of thirst. We need to really start to make an effort to get our kids into the Word of God – so that they might feed on its truth. We need to ensure that we are adequately preparing them for Holy Communion by bringing them not only to Sunday school, but also to regular worship services. That they might hear the Word of Life; that they might know Jesus and feast on their Savior – the True Bread and True Drink of the world.