WHAT ARE YOU HUNGRY FOR?

By Ada Brownell

During the Great Depression one of my husband’s sisters mixed cocoa, sugar and butter to add to a cake. A young woman knocked on their door and asked to use the phone. On the way to the phone, she grabbed the chocolate mixture out of my sister-in-law’s hands--and gobbled it up.

The visitor stood there, the empty bowl in her hand, staring.

“I…I…I’m sorry,” she mumbled, as if she were in shock.

“The poor girl must have been hungry,” my mother-in-law recalled.

A World War II vet we knew also experienced hunger.  Taken prisoner by the Germans, he escaped.  He traveled mostly at night trying to get back to American troops. Water wasn’t too difficult to find, but food was something else.  Hunger gnawed his stomach and mind as he traveled through enemy territory.

He lay on the ground resting one day when a rat, his curious little eyes and body pulsing with life, came to investigate. In seconds the soldier snatched the tail and ate the rat.

Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War II pilot who was lost at sea, in his autobiography tells how and he and his crew ate a raw seagull that landed on Rickenbacker’s head after they pulled the rafts

together for a prayer meeting. They used the insides for fish bait on their improvised pole, and the seagull saved their lives.

What kinds of things are you grasping to fill the God-sized hole within? Do you find sin, success, fame, money, empty relationships don’t satisfy your inner longings?

John Lennon, who sang with the famed Beatles, said “I knew there was nothing at the top, but it was fun getting there.”

Actor Errol Flynn who died in 1959, had his handkerchiefs and other possessions monogrammed with a question mark because he found no meaning in the life of fame, booze and women.

Howard Hughes, once one of the richest men in the world, became a recluse later in life, seeing few people, rarely going out, and fearing germs. The film producer and director, as well as an aviator, found no peace from money and earthly power.

   

Satan lies to everyone and tries to make them believe they can find lasting pleasure in sin and success, but nothing fills the God-shaped void within us except our Creator and Redeemer.

The Bible says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).

The prophet Isaiah wrote, and preceded the words with, “Says the Lord:”

“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good. And let your soul delight in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to me. Hear and your soul shall live....” (Isaiah 55:1-3NKJ).

Good news for anyone who will answer the invitation.

     Copyright © 2015 Ada B. Brownell