Food, we all know, is considered among life’s basic needs. When we have it we are delighted and when we don’t we are very irritable. And often we act like other creatures drawn to places and people where we are sure to be fed. We can testify to this recalling where we often find deer and how some of us have come to adopt some pets.

The people of Israel were very irritated when they could not find the food they wanted on their way to the Promised Land, and so complained bitterly. The people who experienced Jesus’ miracle of multiplication of loaves were all out searching for him—and as Jesus said, because they had enough food the day before. All these I imagine are not strange because they are the ways of all flesh—hunger for food and draw to where they can be found.

But what was lost in the stories is how people in the quest for material food easily forget other forms of life’s hunger. There is the hunger for freedom which we all can testify to, a sense of independence. It could be economic independence, political independence, social independence, even that which draws an 18-year-old to leave the parent’s home, etc. When we don’t have them we also grumble and are drawn to people and things we think can help us realize them—and there is nothing wrong with that.

The problem among some people is that they are drawn to one form of hunger regardless of others. Also they are drawn to the wrong things and people in the bid to realize these forms of freedom. The pilgrim Jews put material hunger above all others and so painted their Egyptian slavery in rosy colors, which it was not. The people in the time of Jesus placed material food above the spiritual food which was the primary focus of Jesus, who came that we may have eternal life—the Promised Land of heaven. The problem in these is the people’s ignorance not knowing that to hunger and be drawn to those who will help to make these Promised Lands possible, bring complete satisfaction whereas to settle for the material food alone was settling for less.

Unfortunately, that ignorance has not yet been cured in the lives of many of our country men and women. It is worse in the sense that a great number of Christians still wallow in this ignorance. At the heart of this ignorance is that HEAVEN is not considered the PROMISED LAND of our journeys—even though the Bible told us that our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3, 20) and Jim Reeves also reminded us that this world is not our home. For instance how many of us have grumbled because one thing or the other prevented them from worshiping where we are fed with the word of God and the sacraments of Christ? How many of us have sought Jesus and gone to church just to be with him and to listen to his words than when they are in the dark holes of their lives and are seeking divine intervention? How many of us have kept our Sunday obligations purely in its observance as God’s Third Commandment for us without the attachment of a family or a friend’s celebration?

So can we from today resolve to hunger for heaven and be drawn to all that makes heaven possible for us? According to Jesus if we seek the kingdom of Heaven first other things will be added.

Rev. Uju Okeahialam, PhD

Sacred Heart Church