March 17, 2015 HUNGER

Hunger in the literal sense is unknown to you and me. In a world
where thousands starve to death every day, we live surrounded by plenty.
With full bellies we watch the T V footage of Third World children with
their bellies swollen, their legs and arms like sticks, eyes vacant in their
ancient faces, and may God have mercy on us as a nation, as a civilization,
as whatever it means to call us Christendom, if we do not find some way
to wipe their hunger from the face of the earth. And may God have mercy
upon us too if we fail to recognize that even in the midst of plenty, we have
our own terrible hungers.

We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We
hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed
these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these
things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved
but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and
understood for all the good times and bad times that for better or worse
have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the
point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times,
the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in
all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.

From Secrets in the Dark (p. 256) by Frederick Buechner