Serving Bread

This past weekend, I was a part of a team of ministry leaders who hosted a training day for college students who are embarking on a short-term mission project this upcoming summer. On Saturday morning, we used breakfast as a cross-cultural exercise, where 50 students were fed grits. We intensified the situation by providing a wonderful breakfast of bacon, eggs, fresh fruit, and muffin to four men. These men got to sit on chairs in the middle of the courtyard, at a table, surrounded by 50 hungry students trying to chow down the butter-less, sugar-less, salt-less grits.

The simulation worked well to teach students about the value of food and to share statistics about [tag]hunger[/tag] in the world. One of the things that came to the forefront was the cost of the meal. We fed 50 students for $5—that’s how much the [tag]grits[/tag] cost us. The students who had the more extravagant meal, it cost us $10 to do breakfast for the four of them.

The students who ate the grits did not starve and we all recognized the opportunities to think about how far our money can go. Some initial observations that I have been reflecting on include: (you may have other ones)

• We can eat on a lot less than we think, if we change some of our standards. Granted, we can’t live on grits all the time, but we can think creatively about what we expect to have at our meals.
• Half of the world lives on less than $2/day. Opting to fast or abstain from food, or to just limit our intake, allows us an opportunity to identify with the poorest of the poor.
• The wealthier societies can be wasteful societies. The four men in the middle with the food had food left on their plates. Although not all the students finished the grits, wasting grits is not as costly as leaving the bacon and eggs on the plates. On a more political level, it can be easy (and not totally inappropriate) to point out the way that governments in third-world countries can waste and mismanage resources. However, it is also appropriate to be self-reflective on how our own society and government is wasteful.
• Sharing our food with others. All four men felt sympathy for the other students. They wanted to share their food. What are the ways we can share our food with other societies? Solutions are needed on both macro and micro levels. On a macro level, our government can encourage the export of food and crops to other societies. There are farm subsidies that need to be rethought on a governmental and economic level. On a micro level, we can be more concerned for those who are poor among us, investing our time, money, and energy in organizations that feed the hungry, and practice more care in thinking about waste.

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