Unexpected Abundance
1 Kings 17:8-16
Three years ago, Becky and I participated in a fundraiser for Church World Services, an organization that connects the church with deep and profound need in the world, especially associated with hunger. It was called the Ration Challenge and it was an interesting, informative, and difficult challenge for Becky and me. But the fundraiser went to a profound need: the nutrition of refugees who were living in UNHCR, or UN Refugee camps across the world waiting for placement in a home country. While in the camps, adequate food access is often minimal, at best.
As someone doing the challenge, you eat the same rations normally allocated to a Syrian refugee in a UNHCR camp in Jordan:
Rice: 4 lbs. 4 oz*
Plain flour: 3 cups*
Lentils: 6oz
Dried chickpeas: 3oz
Canned sardines: (or tofu): 3.75oz
Canned kidney beans: 15.5oz
Vegetable oil: 12oz
While doing this for a week, you also are actively fundraising--sharing your experience with people and constantly raising awareness about the needs and humanity of refugees. This experience is singularly awful. But as you continue to raise money you unlock perks: salt, an additional protein, maybe a caffeinated beverage (i forgot to mention, imagine not having caffeine for a week alongside this miserable diet!).
A breakfast of reheated rice and beans and a burnt attempt at felafel. Miserable.
Most of the meals we ate consisted of rice, beans or lentils. The rice got really old, there was little to no flavor throughout the week. It was awful! On a diet like this, you get physically exhausted easily and frequently. There is little joy to be had in meal times. When you consider just how inadequate the food is, you are forced to consider how this is only one of the myriad challenges that refugees experience when they wait for a place to go after they flee their country.
But there was also a surprise for me. These rations arrive in a box that is about the size of a shoebox, and yet all of the food does indeed last for a week. Another surprise between Becky and me as that we both pooled our donations together to raise a total of $1,200 for Church World Service's ministry to feed refugees. Surprising abundance! Generosity we didn’t expect and a new appreciation for the ways food can stretch to meet our basic nourishment needs. And certainly a newfound joy in the flavor and pleasure of eating food.
In 1 Kings, Elijah meets a widow and asks her for food. She, thinking she did not have enough even to live more than a few days, initially declined to share, but Elijah convinced her to be generous and, instead, she found that her oil and flour stretched much more than she imagined possible. Her household ate for many days afterward! The abundance of this food didn't magically appear before her, but the abundance she already had was hidden from her.
What abundance is hidden from us? What surprising lengths can what we already have go toward our generosity to our community? I hope you will join me this Sunday as we explore not how God magically makes abundance appear, but instead how God can help us discover what we might miss based on our assumptions.
