Plates of Plenty

It was one of the most significant meals our family has ever shared.

Part of my duty as a Christian parent in a first world country is to educate my children that their abundance is a gift from God not meant exclusively for them but to be shared.

There are multitudes of ways to convey this message to them: mission trips, books, and child sponsorship, to name but a few. As I reflected, I found a growing desire to facilitate a memorable evening for our family as a teaching tool on the Gospel’s exhortation to social mercy. 

In God’s economy, our plenty is meant to alleviate the poverty of another.

Together, we selected a night last week during which we would all fast from our dinner. The world’s poorest often go days without food, so sacrificing a meal seemed a fitting way to unite our hearts to their plight.

We set the table with empty plates and glasses filled with cold, clean water (a luxury in and of itself). We drew up our chairs and encircled the table. We talked about the reason for which we were not eating that night and watched several videos from Children’s Hunger Fund that explain their ministry in Zimbabwe, along with one in which a woman expressed the impact having regular meals has had on her life and that of her family. Tears glistened in all of our eyes as she closed by sending her prayers for us… who reclined comfortably watching her story on a machine that cost enough to feed her entire village for a year.

How desperately we need those prayers. Our lack of want for anything has left us equally devoid of dependence on God.

After estimating the cost of an inexpensive family dinner out at a local sandwich eatery, we sent those dollars to Children’s Hunger Fund. At their price of merely $0.16 per meal, by each of us missing one dinner, more than one hundred and fifty were sent to Zimbabwe.

My kids scratched out the math on the table and realized that five people in Africa were now guaranteed at least one meal per day for a month. 

For at least a moment, and I hope much more, they got it. They really got it. Seeing the need, and recognizing the ease with which they could skip a meal, they queried how much we’d need to give (up) to feed those same people for a year.

We bowed our heads as we normally do, but this time we thanked God for the food we weren’t eating and prayed it might nourish another body.

Instead of a cursory ‘grace’ — words uttered as much out of habit as gratitude — we each spilled forth our hopes for both those who would eat it, and the hands that would pack and deliver it. We prayed it would minister to physical hunger, dampening it sufficiently that the spiritual hunger might cry out and be similarly met.

And then, taking our cue from Ann Voskamp, as our meal, we read together. We were nourished by the account of lives changed by the Gospel of Christ and the ministry of those committed to laboring for Him.

Water glasses drained and tears spilled. Our bellies were empty.

But our hearts were full.

 What are you having for dinner tonight?
Can you plan a similar evening for your family?