25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." 26 He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 27 She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:25-28)
It has been strange for me during the last two years because I have not been doing an event called the 30-Hour Famine. For eight years I had been doing this event with youth groups of local churches I was serving. The youth would fast in solidarity with the hungry poor all around the world, seeking to raise awareness that most people in developing countries can feed entire families on one-dollar per day. One dollar—a value menu item at your local fast food restaurant, the cost of a song, many of them anyway, on iTunes—can feed an entire family in parts of Africa and South America.
One year our theme centered around this verse: "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth." (1 John 3:18) It was amazing watching the youth have this "Aha moment" about what it means to follow Jesus.
The beautiful thing about choosing to follow Jesus is coming to the knowledge that God invites us to be the answer to our prayers. We get to be crumbs from the Master's Table. We see "TV's hungry child, his belly swells" and we pray "God, why don't you do something about this?" and "God, why do you allow these things to happen?" As we pray for change to come to our world, as we pray for hunger to end, poverty to cease, God empowers us to make those changes happen, God says, "I have done something about it, I've put you there."
There are times when we become hyper-aware of suffering, last year's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, the ongoing turbulence in East Africa. Sometimes we get the opportunity to see how long term poverty can make bad situations into even more dire situations when disaster strikes. What we need to be continually aware of it that we have the power to change these situations before the tragedy happens—and for many of us, we can do it with “the crumbs from our tables."
There are times when we become hyper-aware of suffering, last year's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, the ongoing turbulence in East Africa. Sometimes we get the opportunity to see how long term poverty can make bad situations into even more dire situations when disaster strikes. What we need to be continually aware of it that we have the power to change these situations before the tragedy happens—and for many of us, we can do it with “the crumbs from our tables."
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