Food for thought!

Today I cleaned out my fridge. I threw away 6 old tomatoes, a slice of deli counter ham, half a slimy  red pepper, a stinky filet of salmon (felt really bad about that one!), a couple of cracked eggs (I felt sad but not bad about that one, our chickens are laying eggs with really thin shells at the moment, and many don't reach the kitchen in one piece, I'm on to it though!), and a whole carton of  out of date double cream.  I then repented. I would like to say that this is the first time I have thrown food away, but to my shame I have done it many times before, many times. Many many times. I wish that I were the only one who does this awful wasteful thing, but I know I am not alone in this. Apparently in the UK we throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink every year, an average of 120kg of food each. That cost us a lot of money, probably about £12 billion. (www.lovefoodhatewaste.com). The thing is I have really been trying to cut down our food waste, I'm quite conscious of it, and have become much better.  I'm just not there yet at being really good at valuing food, at keeping tabs on what is lurking at the back of the fridge.

The other day I received an email from Tearfund about the famine in West Africa, I clicked on the link and saw a mother feeding her children dried leaves because she had nothing else. I wept. Can you imagine having nothing except dried leaves to feed your children? The image keeps coming back to me. I pray that none of her children will die of starvation but about 25, 000 people die of starvation every day. No doubt she loves her children as much as I love mine. If she lived next door I would invite her in and share what we have, out of our abundance. It would change our lives, it would mean less for us, but there would be enough to go around because there is plenty, you can only eat so much, after all.

We live close to the London Olympic site and will hopefully be having some family members of athletes come to stay in our home in a few weeks during the Olympics. As a church we support a number of children through Compassion in Ethiopia, and so to strengthen our link with that beautiful but impoverished country we are hoping, along with a few other church families, to host Ethiopian's. I have begun to wonder what they will make of our lifestyle, my wasteful indulgence, my Christian faith. I want to invite them in, in the name of my Lord Jesus, but I am afraid that I am not reflecting who He is, that I am not living the way He has called me to and that I am not reflecting His glory.

My heart is being reawakened to a passion that the Lord gave me at university when I first read 'Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger' by Ronald Sider (my essay on it was highly passionate and one sided and I got an awful mark, but it completely changed my life), and I am grateful, I am beginning to feel alive again, like my purpose has been revealed. It is growing stronger within me and I am trying to figure out what it looks like to obey Jesus' teaching to feed the hungry, to have concern and compassion for those on the edges of society, for justice. To live prophetically in the midst of vast consumerism which I have swam with for too long. To be a doer of the Word rather than just a hearer.  The Vicar is concerned that I may never smile again under the weight of it all, but I know that the joy of the Lord is our strength, and that my heart rejoices to find its calling. I'm trying to figure it out, and it isn't easy, but it feels the right wrestling match to be having.

For now, my gratefulness to God for His rich generosity towards my family has gone through the roof. I pray that we will be good stewards of His blessings and in turn be a blessing to others.