There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Gandhi
He sat at our kitchen table and told us a story about bread.
“There was a severe drought in my country. I traveled to the hardest hit regions—to the people who were starving—and everywhere I looked I saw hungry people. So many had already died. They had no bread to eat,” he said with a deep sigh. “I left the drought-affected area, and the same day I got on a plane to the USA. When I arrived my host took me from the airport to a grocery store and led me to an aisle filled with fresh-baked bread. He asked me to choose the kind of bread I wanted to have with the dinner his wife was preparing. There were so many loaves—row after row of loaves of bread. I stood there for several minutes, and then I told him I could not choose. I was no longer hungry because when I closed my eyes, I could still see the starving.”
I can’t tell you his name or show you his picture because revealing his identity could endanger him in other parts of the world. But I can tell you that the man who sat at my kitchen table risks his life daily in dangerous places to make disciples who make disciples. Years before we met our friend, we read miraculous stories in disciple-making books of his work among Muslims and how God was using him to spread the gospel to unreached people. I cannot describe the honor it was to feed him, provide transportation while he visited our city, and listen to his stories with our kids.
It was humbling to have him sit at my kitchen table in my middle-class neighborhood where we eat all the bread we want.
I am not a generous person by nature. Just ask my daughters, who like to borrow my clothes and jewelry. Nor am I a great cook. I can follow a recipe, but I cook only because people in my house want to eat, not because I’m passionate about cooking or creative with food. I’m an introvert so people drain me. Put all these together and I’m not exactly the hostess with the mostest.
But sometimes when we do what makes us uncomfortable—such as have houseguests from around the world—our tables become altars and our kitchen rugs become holy ground and we are filled with much more than food. From what I can tell so far, I’m raising a high percentage of introverts. I want them to see me stepping out of my comfort zone, not hiding behind it, so they will have the confidence to follow in my footsteps. In that sometimes-awkward time of stretching us God also comforts us and gives us so much more than we give.
So on that Saturday when my husband showed up unexpectedly with our friend from another country, whom he had been driving around to meetings, and asked if they could stop for lunch, I said yes. Instead of running errands with my kids, I lingered around the kitchen table and listened and learned and let my children see what really matters most—people. On this day I wanted my kids to know that people are always more important than plans. In our culture we always have plans. Our calendars are full, and we are busy. We race from one appointment to another; we multitask and accomplish much. But I wonder if in our haste to check the next thing off our lists we sometimes miss the opportunity to connect with people.
As I imagined our friend standing in the bread aisle, my eyes filled with tears because I have met women around the world who were too hungry to see God except in the form of bread. I quietly told him about meeting desperate street mothers in one of the country’s deadliest slums on the day I left Kenya. I could hardly get the words out as I remembered one mother who was curled up in a ball in the corner of the room grieving her toddler son, who had been stolen while she slept a few days prior, and another mother who had gotten pregnant again just so she could sell the second baby growing in her womb.
These were the poorest, most disregarded women—street moms who begged during the day and prostituted at night, often with a baby tied to their backs. I was invited to meet and work with these desperate women as an outreach of our maternity homes. I didn’t know what to do, but I was desperate to do something.
I left that place without running water, a place you want to run from, and held my too-big sleeping children and cried in their hair, grateful I’d never had to make desperate choices to keep them alive. Two days later, I stood on a stage at the largest, most affluent megachurch in my city. I did my best to hold it together and remember who I was and where I was, but all I could think about was that desperate mom who was still looking for her son. I looked out at the manicured hands and the designer bags and those who have so much. Then I heard God’s voice whisper, Do not judge these women by what they have; they are the same as those who have not. They are all desperately looking for me. They are all looking for the Son.
Aren’t we all just looking for the Son, a bright ray to burn up our desperation from having too much or not enough?
Back at my kitchen table, our friend asked a difficult question that day in response to my story: “How do we tell the hungry of the world, ‘Give us our daily bread’?”
His question turned my thoughts to the Lord’s Prayer. Our family had memorized it around the very table at which we were sitting.
Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.” (Matt. 6:9–13 ESV)
My table has never lacked bread, and I have never known the kind of hunger our friend described. I have not experienced the desperation I saw on the faces of the mothers I met in Kenya. But in that moment in my kitchen with my discarded to-do list, I was desperate to hear his answer. I asked him to tell me how to reconcile both places, both peoples—those who do not have enough and those who have too much. “Traveling between the two places makes me thank God,” he said. “Sometimes God asks us to be a bridge. And the challenge is to trust God because he is sovereign.”
Sometimes God asks us to be a bridge—something that connects two places and peoples. I tucked his words away in my heart for when my feet are straddling two continents. But nonprofit leaders aren’t the only bridges connecting the poor to the rich. Every believer is a bridge to an unbeliever. Our homes are the first places we should start building because we are bridges for our children to find God.
One of the most powerful things parents can give their kids is a view of the world. As adults we are all aware that there are millions of people in the world who don’t have enough. Whether it’s due to a lack of food, clean water, or money, they suffer because they don’t have enough daily bread. If you’re holding this book, you are likely privileged and don’t fit into that category. The privileged have the holy command to share what they have been given.
In the process of writing this book I returned to Kenya with my family over spring break. We entered a home that was smaller than our master bathroom and squinted in the dark to find a place to sit. When our eyes adjusted to the light we cringed as bedbugs crawled all over us.
I couldn’t believe seven people lived in this stifling, dark room. The heat wasn’t as oppressive as the lack of hope. I slid my camera back into my bag because I knew there would be no pictures here. There weren’t any smiling faces or laughing children. There was a heaviness in the air I can’t explain.
The home belonged to the mother of one of the teen moms from the maternity home, and our staff in Kenya wanted us to understand why we needed a transition home for some of the girls and their children. And they needed us to know why providing jobs is so critical.
When we asked how we could pray for her, she shared about the difficult issues in her marriage and the abuse by her drunken husband. We held hands and prayed over her. It was hot and hard to shake the hopelessness that pervaded the room. Just as we were preparing to leave, her husband walked in the door—drunk.
And just like that, my little family was in the middle of a heated dispute in a dangerous slum with angry words being flung back and forth in Swahili. We sat back down. I held my little girl’s hand and whispered a prayer for peace and safety as we sat there, unsure of what was being said. I won’t lie—in that half hour I didn’t feel brave at all and longed to return to my normal.
But as soon as I thought it I heard the words thunder in my heart: This is their normal.
I closed my eyes and silent tears slid down my cheeks. My God, this is their normal. There isn’t a fun week of spring break ahead. There isn’t peace and provision. There isn’t enough bread for the day. And as hard as this is to experience for an hour, this is their way of life.
It’s easy to get so absorbed in our own little worlds that we completely miss the way the rest of the world lives. And I can say this because it’s what I did for a very long time. But I dare you, I beg you to hear this truth: your normal isn’t the world’s normal, and the greatest deception is that you believe that it is.
Your full pantry isn’t normal for the rest of the world. Your cold fridge with your favorite drinks and closets with clothes and multiple pairs of shoes—this is not normal for 75 percent of the world. In economic terms the global North (United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand)—with one quarter of the world’s population—controls four-fifths of the income earned anywhere in the world. Inversely, the global South (every other country)—with three quarters of the world’s population—has access to one-fifth of the world’s income.1
In other words, a small percentage of us has access to most of the world’s resources while a large percentage of the world doesn’t have enough for one day. God uses people and builds bridges to connect the two worlds. But the life we are building is wasted if it doesn’t take us somewhere that matters. It’s tragic to build a bridge to nowhere. The only thing worse is leading our kids there.
The world and all its sparkling offerings give us temporary satisfaction. But we were created for the real thing. John Piper says, “If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”2
It’s tempting to think that those with more than enough always rescue those without enough. I have discovered a mutual rescue because I’m just as desperate to see the Son. So with a worldview that acknowledges some have less, others have more, and maybe, just maybe, God wants to use us as a bridge—we first need to answer the question, Why do we give?
I don’t want to raise children who believe we are working our way to heaven, checking off an eternal list of good deeds to earn our way in and to somehow build a bridge high enough to get us there. No, our salvation is only by grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy.
I discovered how to teach this truth to my kids when a friend sent me a link to a devotion on the familiar parable found in Matthew 25:
When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, “Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.”
Then those “sheep” are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?” Then the King will say, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”
Then he will turn to the “goats,” the ones on his left, and say, “Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.”
Then those “goats” are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?”
He will answer them, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.”
Then those “goats” will be herded to their eternal doom, but the “sheep” to their eternal reward. (vv. 31–51)
The following excerpt from a devotion titled, “The Severe Mercy of a Pre-emptive Judgment” helped me to clearly understand the parable:
So is Jesus saying we are not, in fact, saved by grace alone through faith alone but by feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, clothing the naked, ministering to the sick and visiting those in prison? . . . How do we reconcile these un-minced words of Jesus that seem to say just the opposite?
Here’s how I resolve it. . . . Nothing we can do, no matter how extraordinarily meritorious, can ever cancel our own unpayable debt and earn for us the grace of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ—NOTHING. I think Jesus is mercifully giving us the answers to the final exam. He’s revealing to us what a person who is saved by grace alone through faith alone actually looks like in the midst of a fallen and mercilessly cruel world. The hallmark quality of a person who has received mercy is that they have become a person who shows mercy.
In this famous final judgment parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus is offering us a severe mercy. He is giving us the gracious opportunity, right now, to examine ourselves preemptively according to the terms of the judgment before it actually happens. The question? Are we becoming the kind of people whose lives exude the evidence of having been saved by grace through faith?3
The words shook me to the core and reminded me of the why behind everything we do. This is why we should give. We should give to others because Jesus gave to us. We should extend mercy because we have received mercy. We don’t give our time, money, and talent to show we are following Christ. We do it because we are Christ followers. This is Christianity.
So what does a generous family really look like? I can tell you that sometimes it looks like a family who is arguing at dinner and giving up on the devotional reading. Ask me how I know this.
I think it’s dangerous to believe our family should be the holiest house on the block. If we buy into this lie, when we fail—and we will fail—succeeding will be even harder. I believe the mark of a family trying to bridge their lives to others is one that loves others well. It’s easy to equate mission with action and traveling to the other side of the world, but mission is more than that. Loving others is a way of life; we don’t have to squeeze one more event into our busy calendars to live a generous, missional life. It starts with opening our eyes to what’s in front of us. We are surrounded by people in need and opportunities to love others: single moms on the soccer team, a friend with a new cancer diagnosis, an elderly neighbor recovering from surgery.
Following are four ways your family can live generously right where you are:
I love taking Communion with my family. Our church offers it corporately every month, though it’s also available weekly. There’s just something very holy about breaking bread together and remembering the gift given. I usually cry, especially if my husband asks one of our kids to lead us in prayer during the reflective time when families circle together to take Communion. Or I cry when I pray. Okay, I cry no matter who prays.
Last Christmas we had a mess of a morning. There were tears and angry words, and it was a miracle we made it to the service at all. I hadn’t shaken off the bad feelings the morning carried with it. When the congregation stood to take Communion I wanted to run. But when I tore off a piece of bread from the broken loaf I thought of my brokenness. Oh, I can make a mess of this life with my knack for attempting to control all the things that are out of my control. When I dipped that bit of bread into the red juice and it soaked up the liquid, I remembered that Jesus—the greatest gift—makes each day new and whole.
But Communion isn’t just for Sundays or Christmas. It is a way of life—we are to be broken and shared. Ann Voskamp, in her book The Broken Way, describes how she and her family spent her birthday performing small acts of kindness and giving gifts around town. They left cookies on police cars and paid for coffee for a line of people at a coffee shop. She says:
What we break and give comes back to us as a bit of communion. . . . When you walk into a diner across the street and tell the waitress you’re paying for that family’s dinner, it’s a thing you don’t forget, and it feels like an act of re-membering. The waitress laughs and you wink and leave before they’re finished at the all-you-can-eat buffet. A diner and hungry people and the presence of Christ in you, reaching your unsure hand out, can taste like a sacrament.4
Ann explains the connection between Communion and thanksgiving earlier in the book:
I hold the broken Last Supper in front of me, a Jesus with broken hands. What did Jesus do after He gave thanks? “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them.” He took it and gave thanks—eucharisteo. Then he broke it and gave. How many times had I said it: “Eucharisteo precedes the miracle”? Thanksgiving precedes the miracle—the miracle of knowing all is enough. And how many times had I read it: “[Jesus] took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people” (Matt. 16:36 NIV)? Eucharisteo—Jesus embracing and giving thanks for his not-enough—that preceded the miracle. But why hadn’t I been awakened at the detonation of the revelation before? What was the actual miracle? The miracle happens in the breaking. Not-enough was given thanks for, and then the miracle happened: There was a breaking and a giving—into a kind of communion—into abundant filling within community. The miracle happens in the breaking.5
Acknowledging what we have and what the world lacks will break us. Becoming a bridge—a place to span the gulf in between us—will break us. It’s in the breaking that we learn the true beauty of giving.
Ann is a dear friend, and when this book about brokenness was released, she sent me a copy along with a loaf of bread. I sat at my kitchen table and broke the loaf in two, then passed it to my son to tear off a piece. As we nibbled on the crusty loaf I thought of the holy man who had sat in the same spot and told me about the world that didn’t have bread to eat. I swallowed my bite of bread and whispered a prayer for the hungry and desperate on both sides of the world, for those who have too much and those who don’t have enough. “Give us this day, our daily bread. . . .”