Good morning…
Through Northside Church, we feed tons of homeless men, women, and children throughout Atlanta each Super Bowl Sunday. Today at the church, volunteer men, women, and children will make hundreds and hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from donated ingredients. Between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm, generous men, women, and children will drop off the gallons and gallons of homemade soup, soup cooked in their homes, frozen in their freezers, and ready to be taken and served tomorrow at five Atlanta shelters.
As I made, packaged, and froze five gallons of soup, I felt compelled by the Spirit to do a strange thing. I felt nudged to keep out a single serving of soup for myself. Doesn’t that sound selfish? Why hoard soup a hungry person could enjoy? Why not give every ounce of soup freely, in service to God, for the benefit of all? Why would I be coaxed to keep a single serving of soup?
As I sat with this inspired directive, I sensed God’s answer. The Spirit was inviting me into a feasting relationship with our city’s homeless men, women, and children, to “sit at table with them” in a deeper way. Instead of check off today’s to-do-list “Make soup for the homeless,” God shifted the invitation to “Feed your hunger today keenly aware of your neighbor’s hunger.”
This Super Bowl weekend, when my stomach growls like their stomach growls, together we will be nourished by God’s living Spirit. As I savor my soup, spoonful by spoonful, I will pray that all eating soup and sandwiches will feel savored by God, day after day. When I prayerfully partake, I will remember all the hands who make and take, all the hearts that give and receive, all the bodies that are fed in unison this weekend, moving from hungry to full on many, many life-giving levels.
Right now, Jesus’ second command takes on a new tint, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27). Before this moment, I understood truth deeply: loving God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul, we are prepared to love our neighbor, in the same balanced measure, as we love our self. Right now, I understand truth more deeply: loving God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul, we are prepared to love our neighbor, at the exact same time, as we love our self.
Jesus equip us, in the same balanced way, that Jesus sent his twelve harvest hands out with this charge: “Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously” (Matthew 10:5-8, MSG).
This Super Bowl weekend, do we trust God to generously feed the deep hunger in others at the same time our own deep hunger is being generously fed?
Sue
