famine

Every morning when Hanna wakes up, we tiptoe down the silent hall, past quiet bedrooms and snuggle down into our living room couch to watch Kipper together. This is our morning ritual and I love it. Besides bedtime, it is the only time I have in the day to talk and cuddle with Hanna alone. I get her a sippy of milk, a bowl of cheerios and raisins and her blanket.

Kipper the dog is one of the only kid’s cartoons that I can watch without grimacing at least once. Simply drawn and utterly understated, the show’s characters all talk in smooth British accents and are accompanied with a catchy jazz tune. It is the perfect wake-up show.

In one of the episodes, Kipper and his friend Tiger decide one hot day to fill up a small inflatable pool, only to discover that the pool is only big enough for one. They tousle and knock one another down before finding out that it is fun to squirt water in the air with the hose. Little do they know that the hose is only loosely screwed together at one part and that part decides to break off from the rest of the hose and accidentally flips onto an open window ledge. The water begins to fill up Kipper’s small home (interestingly reminding me of a Curious George story) until the home becomes one colossal pool.

What I found most interesting was not Kipper and Tiger’s reaction- not panic, or fear or alarm, but rather a brief look of mild surprise, then excitement as they push the inflatable pool through the window as it becomes a rowboat- but my own reaction. My first thought was- that is such a huge waste of water- and a realization that in the year and a handful of months, I have stepped out of a generic American mindset and find myself in a new place. I get it. I get that the supply that we have, whether of food or water or money, is limited. It can run out. It can become sparse. It can be squandered.

I have to say at this point: I’m not writing to expose some hidden agenda-- Kipper’s underlying promotion of excess—but rather to say that I was surprised that I even thought this or saw this depiction as something that we all take for granted. Hoses running in the backyard, sprinklers on throughout the day. Yet it shows me that life outside America is changing my perspective.

So what do I do with this realization?

Today I read through the Book of Ruth. Only four chapters long, I was able to finish the book in one thirty minute elliptical workout. The first sentence caught my attention because it moves the story forward in a significant and defining way and is one of the causes that God uses in bringing Naomi to Ruth in the first place.

"In those days, there was a famine in the land…” (Ruth 1:1)

There was a famine.

I feel redundant in saying this, but as an American, I have a difficult time truly grasping the implications of these words. Famine to me is going to Cozmo, the local store, and discovering that they are out of a particular brand of cereal. Or running out of eggs halfway through the week. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it shows how distantly I can truly relate to famine. The grocery stores always stock food. The food supply line remains constant, at least for now.

Naomi’s family faced a severe famine in Bethlehem, so intense that they uprooted their entire life and disconnected from their extended family, traveling hundreds of miles to Moab (which incidentally is located in modern day Jordan).

I wonder if we will ever have to face something of that magnitude in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our children, to the extent that it will cause a major upheaval in our daily life, changing permanently our perspective on life. I hope not.

Yet in experiencing the lack, how much more grateful are we for what we do have?

This is true in experiencing any kind of famine. His ultimate paradox. That in loss we gain. To expound on that, the more loss, the more to gain-- in true joy, true gratitude, true life.

My gardener lives in a room the size of a walk-in closet that opens out into our garage parking lot. During the summer months, he keeps his door open to get some relief from the heat and hangs a threadbare sheet across for some privacy. My Filipino helper sends money home to family who still use a wood burning stove. There are thousands of Syrian refugees that have come over into Jordan in the last several months with just a few duffel bags. The aid organizations are having to provide for them from the ground up, meaning these refugees need just about everything. Jordanians are in upheaval about sharing their already depleted water supply with thousands of foreigners.

This is famine.

No one that I know chooses famine. It is thrust upon someone ,or rather one is thrust into it. It brings you to the end of yourself. And without help, you will die.

Yet Christ chose famine. When He departed from His Father to come to earth, He chose famine in emptying Himself of everything that He once possessed to full measure, namely His intimate communion with the Father. He chose famine in dying. And in all this, God brought life, abundance, fullness.

Unlike Christ, I feel famine when I am honest about my sin, when He lovingly shows me the poverty of my spirit without Him. I see that without Him, I am living in famine. And He, the emptied One, overcame death and became life. So when He shows me the famine of my soul-- this is love?

Yes.

It’s only when I feel and know the famine in my soul, my spirit that I want to be filled. How do I become full? In making choices to empty myself of things that only weigh me down, burden me—sins that press down and weights that I carry unnecessarily.

The Divine exchange, as my sister-in-law Elizabeth calls it. My burdens, my emptiness for His yoke, His fullness. Only when I realize I am in the midst of famine can I ever hope to receive His abundant love, forgiveness, redemption—life.

Then I see that we truly have so much.

soli deo gloria