I am poor and needy.
—Psalm 40:17
This morning’s chilling headline declared: Death of Innocents!
The accompanying picture was haunting: starving children with tear-streaked cheeks, bloated bellies, and arms and legs like sticks.
Such deprivation is foreign to most of us . . . but emotional hunger may gnaw at us; a craving to be wanted, to be loved, to be at peace.
And hunger to be better than we are; a “hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
We know next to nothing about the pinch of economic poverty, but at times we feel the malnourishment of inner famine. King David had a boatload of money but confessed to being “poor and helpless.” Material prosperity doesn’t eliminate spiritual starvation.
Many are dying for want of a piece of bread . . .
and many for want of the peace of Christ.