I’m saddened tonight by the pictures I’ve just looked through, at Boston.com, of the crises in Somalia and Kenya. Heartbroken. Confused. Angered even.
What place, what role, what purpose does such hunger and suffering have in today’s world? I want to ask God—what is the purpose, the reasoning behind this? In a world in most cities, one can find 43 brands of peanut butter, 62 different types of bread, and a whole grocery row full of juices of every flavor and size, why the inequality of food distribution? Why the death of tiny children, like 4 year old Aden Ibrahim, from malnutrition?
Aid is arriving daily, and NGO’s like Doctor’s Without Borders are on the scene, but it’s hardly enough. The refugees continue to pour into the camps. The cattle continue to die. The drought continues to rage on, threatening to produce a famine.
O, my heart is there. I wish I could go. I wish I could go and hold the babies who have nobody to hold them as their little bodies fight off the painful death of dehydration, of malnutrition, of dysentery.
Where are you, my God? Do You see? Do you know? Why do you seem so silent at times like this?
O God, Psalm 33 cries out to this situation:
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.
20 Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
That you would not be silent. That you may deliver their soul from death. That you may keep them alive in famine. You are their only help. You are their only shield in this worsening disaster of cataclysmic proportions.
And God, I find my own self-centered, selfish soul in need of the same thing—that you may deliver my soul from death–death of despair, death of depression, death of fear in the middle of the night. That you would keep me alive in famine—not the famine of food, for I am spoiled, I am well-fed, I am over fed. But the famine of hopelessness. The famine of shame. The famine of lack of peace, lack of rest. You are my only hope. You are my only shield. And yet I do not sense you like my soul longs to. Needs to. And I do not feast on your word like my soul needs to.
God help them. God help me.
Of course, the answer to “Why?” in most cases is “the sin of man”. Drought and natural causes are usually just ‘tipping point’ events…but the problems underlying world hunger are almost always related to war and other power struggles, which often separate people from the freedom required to escape their poverty and their hunger.