This article is directly related to the one posted on August 30 where I cited the words of Jesus found in Matthew 25:40. In verse 35 of the same chapter, Jesus said, “I was hungry, and you fed me.”
September is widely known as Hunger Action Month in the U.S. This is an important emphasis that has often not been sufficiently observed. Hunger is a grave problem even here in the U.S., one of the richest nations in the world.
Feeding America is the name of the organization that is the primary advocate of Hunger Alert Month. On their website (here), they state that more than 47 million people in the U.S. face hunger, including one in five children.
I live in Missouri, which has a population of about 6.2 million people. It’s hard for me to fathom the fact that every person in more than seven states the size of Missouri is facing food insecurity.
Fortunately, many of those people can get help from the numerous affiliates of Feeding America. Locally, Harvesters is the Feeding America food bank serving a 26-county area of northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas (see here).
As Harvesters provides food and related household products to more than 760 nonprofit agencies including food pantries, community kitchens, shelters, and other similar facilities, I was happy to make a contribution to that organization as one of my hunger actions for this month.
There are similar food banks across the U.S. A couple of weeks ago I created a “Google alert” for Hunger Action Month, and I have been notified about magazine and newspaper articles from all across the country, including one last week from Bolivar Herald Free-Press telling about Ozark Food Harvest.*
Do you who live in the U.S. know the organization related to Feeding America near you? Is there some action—a contribution or maybe volunteer work—you can do during this Hunger Action month?
Hunger, of course, is a global problem, and the World Food Program (WFP) is an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide. Founded in 1961, WFP is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 80 countries. (WFP’s website can be accessed here.)
According to an Aug. 2 WFP article, 309 million people in 71 countries now face acute hunger. Of these, more than 37 million people face emergency levels of hunger or worse: there are 1.3 million people in the grips of catastrophic hunger, primarily in Gaza and Sudan.
Cindy (Hensley) McCain became the executive director of the WFP last year, and as such she is the head of what is said to be the world’s largest humanitarian organization.**
Feeding the hungry is good, but seeking to prevent hunger is better. We must ask why there are so many hungry people in the world, realizing that charity is good, but it is not enough.
In my next blog post, I am planning to introduce a 2024 book by Jon Paul Sydnor, a college professor in Boston, but here are pertinent words from that book I am sharing now:
... charity will always be necessary, but it must be practiced alongside social criticism. Charity must ask, “Why is this charity needed? Instead of feeding the hungry, could we eliminate hunger?” (The Great Open Dance, p. 284).
Reading those words caused me to remember the words of Dom Helder Camara (1909~99) that I have cited before:
And here is the distressing state of affairs in the world today: the global hunger problem is most likely going to become increasingly worse. Global warming, leading to more droughts as well as to more floods, will likely cause food shortages and acute hunger for many people in some parts of the world.
Still, while being concerned about the causes of hunger and the dire prospects for the future, some chronically hungry people need help now. Let’s do something to help such individuals, knowing that when we help feed hungry people, we are figuratively feeding Jesus.
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* The Free Press is the weekly newspaper of Bolivar, Mo., the town where June and I met as first-year students at Southwest Baptist College (as it was then, in 1955). Ozarks Food Harvest, located in Springfield, is the Feeding America food bank for southwest Missouri. It serves 270 hunger relief organizations across 28 Ozarks counties.
** McCain (b. 1954), the widow of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture from 2021 to 2023.
Note: Some of you may want to go back and read blog posts I made ten/eleven years ago regarding the topic of hunger. See “Charity is Not Enough” (about Bread for the World and posted on 6/10/14), and “Food for the Hungry” (posted on 7/30/13).
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