Don't get me wrong, my mother worked hard to feed and cloth us.
Yet she wasn't always there to cook healthy meals.
Going to a two teacher country school, there was no shop close by, in my first few years to buy lunches.
There was no money either, to do so. We took sandwiches from home. These were made from the previous days, bread. It was kept in a bread safe, not the fridge or freezer. We mostly had home made butter and some kind of spread. The sandwich was wrapped in greaseproof paper. This kept it clean, but the outside of the bread hardened as it dried out and wasn't the most palpable to eat. Our drink was water from the outside school taps, cold in winter and warm in summer. We children ate and drank what we had with no complaint, we all, in those days, just accepted that this was the way life was. Very few children who attended our school had it much better.
How different it was for my children, and now my grandchild, and yet sometimes they throw their lunches away. Good healthy food, thrown into the dustbin with no appreciation.
Not all children have it so good. There are many today who's parents spend the household money unwisely leaving the children to suffer hunger. Some Australian children are sent to school without a breakfast and often no lunch. In my opinion, this is evil, and yet, these parents spend on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. In other words, on their own pleasures and pursuits, instead of on nourishing food for their offspring.
Whenever I am anywhere, be it MacDonald's or the supermarket, if I see a child or an adult, who looks hungry or poor, I buy them food. How amazed they always are. High school kids flock into MacDonalds to buy themselves something after school. Often one child will hang back as they don't have the money, these are the ones I approach and say. You look just like my grandson, or granddaughter. Here take this money and buy yourself something.
One child of a family of three children that I treated to chips and chocolate in a supermarket one day looked at me in adoration. "You must be a very kind lady," she said.
I was so taken aback that I failed to tell her, that Jesus loved her. I couldn't speak for the lump in my throat.
But then perhaps I wasn't meant to say a thing? God works in mysterious ways.
I am not writing this to build myself up, but to demonstrate how aware we need to be, of the less fortunate.
We can't take anything with us when we depart this world. Sharing is the best policy.
"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me,
I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Matthew 25:42-45
