Have Your Self(less) A Merry Little ChristmasBrian Heasley - 20 Dec 2013

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:35-36

As UK government ministers choose to ignore the growing need for a review around food in the UK, a friend of ours, on reading the news, wrote these words:

"Tears roll reading this. Please world see what is happening on your door step & ask yourself what is just & right"

As Christmas Day approaches many of us in the western world are getting ready to feast. We gather with family and friends to celebrate the coming of Christ, through being together, eating and the giving of gifts.

Most years I somehow manage to overdo it, ending up feeling totally stuffed by mid afternoon and checking out diet websites by Boxing Day.

But I’m one of the fortunate ones. For many, food poverty is a startling reality. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone in it, yet somehow inequality still reigns. 

Here in the UK, despite an increased economic forecast, food poverty has risen to record levels. Since April this year more than 500,000 people have relied on assistance from the 400 food banks run by The Trussell Trust charity, double the number of food banks compared to the same time last year. The Red Cross are helping to collect and distribute food aid in Britain for the first time since the Second World War. There are many who are struggling to feed themselves and their families.

We thought about putting a different article up this Christmas. One that would leave us all feeling that warm Christmas glow, but we are here to provoke prayer and action and this desperate situation desperately needs both.

Food poverty is wrong, and we need, at least, to be starting to pray about it. But then we need to transform those prayers into actions.

How would you feel about fasting for a day over Christmas? How would you feel about giving the money you saved from those days of fast to a food charity? What do you, your family and your community do to help feed others? We’d love to hear your stories.

Increasingly, we want to pick a fight; we want to pick fights with areas of injustice in this world. We won’t always know how to do it but, as a prayer movement, we want to provoke you to prayer. Over the next year we will use whatever it takes to get the body of Christ banging on the door of heaven about areas of injustice.

Right now it’s Christmas and feasting is upon us, but let us remember all those who have none; all those who can’t afford a turkey. Use this period as a time to pray, as a time to think and as a time to ask God how you could be the change in your area.

Tis the season to be jolly? But sometimes, quite frankly, that’s not enough. The world is not a particularly jolly place a lot of the time; it’s a hungry place, and as long as we, here in the west, get lulled into a meat coma of materialism that borders on gluttony, nothing will change.

Come on! Lets get some prayer and action around this whole area of food poverty by praying, providing and protesting.  

Pray for change

Provide by giving to charities and individuals who need food

Protest get in touch with your MP ask why they didn’t vote on a food poverty review