What Are You Hungry For?
By Fr. Todd Bragg
I was reading an article today where the heart of the article focused on the following premise: what people are searching for and what they are getting (or not getting, as the case may be) when searching for churches. The one quotation that caught my attention was "
I'm just not getting fed." It's funny to think about the fact that if you have not had anything to eat for a while, your mind starts to dwell on that fact and nothing else. We focus on everything that we might want to eat: pizza . . . Chinese food . . . spaghetti . . . Mexican . . . . fast food . . . fried chicken . . . a sandwich . . . And we finally make the decision as to what exactly we want and once we do . . . that's it. We fixate on the food of choice until we get it. And then finally we eat and we are satisfied.
As Christians, we also have to be fed on a daily basis. The article that I was mentioning at the beginning of this short essay of sorts was focused on pastors needing to feed their flock with the Word of God. And this is certainly the truth. People are hungry for the Word of God. They want to hear what God is saying to them. But pastors, priests, ministers, bishops, etc. can only do so much in a given week. What I mean is that time is limited in what the priest or pastor can talk about in a given week. If the average church service is, say, an hour . . . an hour and a half . . . how much of that time is strictly the preaching of the priest or minister? Fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? More? Less? As my congregation will let you know, I don't time my preaching . . . . . I just start in and see where God is leading me! But even with that, I might get twenty minutes of preaching in on a given Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Think about it. Twenty-four hours in a day. Seven days in a week. By my calculation, that is One-Hundred and Sixty-Eight hours in a given week and the preacher gets fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty minutes of preaching out of all those hours. That's not much time in comparison. So that's why I say, in essence what the preacher is doing is planting the seed and leaving the rest to God.
One of my favorite Scripture passages is from First Kings. It is the passage where the Prophet Elijah is fleeing from Jezebel and Elijah "
went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die: and said, it is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life: for I am not better than my fathers." (
I Kings 19:4)
Then Elijah laid down and went to sleep and the angel of the Lord touched Elijah and "
said unto him, Arise and eat." (
Verse 5) And Elijah had seen where the angel of the Lord had placed there by his head water and food for him to eat.
And then Elijah laid down again, . . . "
And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat: because the journey is too great for thee." (
Verse 7)
This is certainly one of my all-time Scripture passages. I think it is profound for a number of reasons:
First, God does indeed feed us. He feeds us through the Word of God. We Christians must be hungry for the Word of God. In our society, there are so many different types of food to choose from: pizza . . . Chinese food . . . Mexican food . . . fast-food . . . chicken . . . seafood . . . . etc. Likewise, many people choose to get fed from different interests, desires, etc: power, riches, money, fame, drugs, alcohol, etc. People make choices where they eat and how they spend their time. We, as Christians, have to make a choice as well: we have to want to be fed by the Word of God. And then make a point of studying the Word of God on a daily basis. Get in the habit of reading the Bible every day.
Secondly, God also feeds us through His Church. God does not need our help but He desires us to help Him. And as a result, He founded the Church here on earth. And the Church distributes the Sacraments to the world. And the Chief Sacrament is the Mass. Come to Mass and receive the Precious Body and Blood of Our Blessed Saviour. Our Lord loves us so much that He gives of Himself so that we can be nourished. "Arise and eat: because the journey is too great for thee!" Our Lord wants us to receive of the Sacraments of the Church as a physical and spiritual reminder that He is alive and well in the world. The Sacraments help nourish and sustain us in the long journey we call "life."
God gives us nourishment but we have to go find it. God gives us food but we have to make the effort to get it. God provides spiritual food and drink for our journey but we have to make the effort to obtain it. Get a relationship with God. Make Him the Lord and Master of your life. Get in the habit of reading the Bible on a daily basis. And take advantage of the Sacraments. The same Lord Who said: "This is My Body, This is My Blood" is the same Lord Who is awaiting for us to come and worship Him, to come and listen to Him, to come and receive Him when we come to church.
To find out more about St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Church, please visit:
http://indyanglican.blogspot.com/
To find out more about the Anglican Church of the Holy Spirit, please visit:
http://anglicanholyspirit.blogspot.com/
