Taking the Time to Make a Difference

Two things I remember well from childhood are bread and water: homemade bread, kneaded and risen and wonderful – and water, scarce and costly and sometimes not too pleasant to drink. When my mother baked bread, the world changed. Ordinary air was scented by rising yeast and a hot oven, and conversation would be stopped by the sound of a knife slicing through the crust. The home where I grew up had no "city water" but relied on two cisterns that captured rain water running from the roof. Every year, though, shortly after the catalpa trees were in full bloom, the cistern water would take on an additional flavor from the blossoms blown into rain gutters -- producing a catalpa blossom brew not a treat for eye or tongue. When rain was not sufficient, water had to be purchased from someone with a truck and a tank who could haul the water from a city source to our home, bringing an unpleasant taste of unfamiliar chemicals. But what I remember most pleasing was the taste and feel of cool water without catalpa or chlorine flavoring, cool water from a late spring rain, pumped with an iron-handled device into an enamel cup, the ultimate refreshment on a hot day in early summer.

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An adventure novel introduced me to the punishment of being "confined to the brig on bread and water" — a traditional sentence for a sailor at sea convicted of a serious infraction. I knew such a punishment had to include stale, hard bread and water stored too long in a barrel – not the bread newly risen or rainwater captured clean and pure. But one man’s punishment was another’s salvation. The First Book of Kings includes the account of Elijah fleeing for his life into the desert, then giving up and being ready to die. An angel brought him a hearth cake and a jug of water – and Elijah was strengthened by that food. Again and again, our Scriptures serve us bread and water – and ultimately, the bread of life and the living water which redeem us forever from hunger and thirst.

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Two things I remember well from my adult life are bread and water: people in tattered clothing searching through garbage from fine resort hotels in Jamaica, hoping for scraps of bread and other leftovers from the tables of plenty, and water trickling through trash, unhealthy. This is real confinement to bread and water that will not — should not — let anyone sleep, not anyone who has eyes to see or ears to hear.

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Hope comes to me, though, that people will rise up to do acts of charity and justice – that people with plenty will do what is good and share what they have with those who have none, and that people with influence will change public policies for the better. Bread for the World is an organization described as "a collective Christian voice" urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Right now, Bread for the World is asking people to help reduce a world-wide sentence to confinement with moldy bread and stagnant water by encouraging the passage of Senate Bill 1524, the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act, and House Resolution 2139, the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act. "U.S. foreign assistance has helped reduce child deaths, improve agricultural capacity, and increase school enrollment,” according to the organization. “But even more can be done if we improve the way foreign aid is delivered." Need to know who to call or write? Or to find out more about the organization? Visit www.bread.org and make a difference in the world.

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