Hunger for God

When I was 17, I had a summer job as a secretary at The Memphis Country Club. In the elegant, old-world dining room with starched white linens even at lunch, I learned to love lamb and mint jelly, grilled cheese with bacon, quiche and other exotic foods. One of my duties was to decipher the chef’s handwriting and make daily menus, requiring frequent trips to ask him to translate. (The girl who took my place when I left wasn’t so careful, so one day when the president of the club sat down to peruse the menu, he saw, “Chicken Crap.” She was fired.)

Though I enjoyed the lunches as much as anyone, I despised the office talk. For 8 hours the women talked of two things: food and TV. Just beginning to think seriously about God, eager for learning, passionate for meaning, I wanted to scream, “Wake up! Don’t you know there’s more to life than eating and watching TV?”

Today I not only can’t recall my former indignation, I’ve become those women, I’m ashamed to say.

For some time, I’ve been sleepily aware of a dullness in my spirit, an inability to muster up much enthusiasm for spiritual things. This is not a state I am comfortable with; my lips confessing but my heart far. One reason I sing in the choir at church is that I want the truths we sing to find resonance in me; if not, to expose to me my hypocrisy. And, of late, I’ve sensed that the words and the reality don’t match.

So when I heard a quote from a book at church on hunger for God, I raced to check it out from the library before anyone else could snatch it. I was providentially deaf when the speaker mentioned the subject of the book and too much in a hurry to read the front cover, or I wouldn’t have bothered. Fasting was the last thing on my mind.

But, it was what I needed. I’d already been ruminating on the sisters of Sodom; their arrogance, lives of careless ease, and unconcern for the poor. In an earlier post I talked about pride; here I want to talk about being overfed. This quote from Piper’s book sums up his thesis well.

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite of heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world….The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.” John Piper, "Hunger for God".

He makes a compelling argument for fasting which I won’t relate here; if your resistance is like mine was, you’ll need to be tricked into reading it, too. I won’t be able to convince you. But, from the first page, I knew this was a message for me, that I felt no desire for God because my soul was stuffed “with small things”, leaving no room for the great. Jesus warned that “the pleasures of this life” and “the desire for other things” would choke out the word.

C.S. Lewis said our problem is not that are desires are too strong, but rather are too weak. “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The “Weight of Glory”, an essay.)

I have been far too easily pleased. Give me a good book, a bowl of ice cream, let me snuggle before the fire; I can’t think of much better. And because I’m a rich American, I can do that or any number of pleasurable things every single day. And I have.

But, by God’s grace and prodding, things are changing. Fasting is a time when, for just a few hours, I stop indulging. I set my heart and my mind elsewhere. I listen. I hunger. I even cry. I identify with “want”. I do believe I am waking up again.