Home
>
Spirituality
>
Starved Spirits, Sorrowful Souls

Starved Spirits, Sorrowful Souls

Give us today our daily bread. Matthew 6:11 (NIV)

We can be intelligent, healthy, rich, and religious and it would be meaningless without bread. The most pious saint is still dependent on bread. So this prayer is an admission of a great need; the need for bread and it is all-inclusive. No man can eat intelligence. We cannot eat money; we cannot eat the Bible and survive.

The implication in this prayer is clear: we are dependent creatures. We need something that we are incapable of furnishing for ourselves. The tractor moves down the furrows, we plant the seed, but what purpose would it serve if there was no life in the seed? Someone has put life in the seed, life in the soil, and life in the earth. Even though we are co-laborers with God in His work, we are still dependent upon Him and His creation. We know this because if the life in the seed and soil dies, we also die.

It is only when we realize and recognize the nature of our relationship to God are we able to even hope to understand our own life or to deal adequately with life's many complexities. Whether we like it or not, we are creatures of the dust and to dust we will return. We are wholly, completely, totally dependent upon God's mercies.

Give us today our daily bread. Not only is this prayer a reference to physical hunger, but also to spiritual hunger. Dr. David G. Myers, in his article, "The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty," observed: No society in the history of the world has ever enjoyed the standard of living Americans know today...

Yet since 1960, the divorce rate has doubled, teen suicide tripled, violent crime quadrupled, the prison population has quintupled, and some estimates put the incidence of depression in the year 2000 at ten times what it was in the year 1900. Americans are less happy today than they were 40 years ago, despite the fact that they make 2.5 times more money. How did we get into this mess?

We are indeed starved spirits; our souls in deep sorrow. There is a hunger down in our souls; in the very root of our being crying, begging, pleading to be fed.

There is the hunger for love. Many have never experienced it and do not really know what it is they are hungry for. But they are hungry; their spirits starved for someone to just care about them. This type of hunger can be likened to those times when we are hungry for food, but do not know what it is we are hungry for. So we just eat something, but it does not satisfy. Many of our brothers and sisters who are hungry for love try to find it in drugs or alcohol or gambling or sex or all kinds of vices only to learn that they do not satisfy the deep hunger for love and acceptance.

Jesus got hungry, not only physically but spiritually. You recall when He was going to Gethsemane He told His disciples to, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." Matthew 26:36-38 (NIV).

Jesus was hungry. He was hungry for companionship, hungry for comfort, hungry for the presence of close friends, hungry to have somebody with Him who understood His agony, understood His pain, understood His sorrow, understood His death sentence. Jesus was spiritually hungry for empathy and to know that his disciples were with Him.

As a nation and as a world, our spirits are anguished and tormented for lack of spiritual food. Our longing reaches to the very depth of our being. We are so desperately hungry that we hardly know what to do with ourselves. Our stomachs may be full, but we are hungry. We may have money in our pockets, but we are hungry. We may have a roof over our heads and shoes on our feet, but we are hungry. We are hungry for understanding and need to feed from the plate on nonjudgmentalism and compassion. We are hungry for kind words and need to feed from the buffet of compassion and encouragement. We are hungry for belonging and need to feed from the bowl of forgiveness and mercy and tolerance. We are hungry for our critics to walk a mile in our shoes, put on the coat of our burdens, and wear the shoes of our pains. Our souls are in deep sorrow and the sounds of starving spirits resound throughout the universe.

OUR PLEA: Give us today our daily bread.
JESUS: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, veteran social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach which can be reviewed on her site. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, is expected to be available soon.

You are welcome to visit amen ministries: your soul's service station for spiritual refreshing, soul edification, browse our newly expanded mini shopping mall or review our recommended books you may want to add to your personal library.

Blessings to all!

licensed cleaning services Park Ridge ...

In The News:

Paralyzed woman Audrey Crews controls a computer with a brain chip from Elon Musk's Neuralink, demonstrating breakthrough brain-computer interface technology.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Meta removed over 600,000 predatory accounts from Instagram and Facebook while launching enhanced safety protections for teenage users on both platforms.

Facebook crypto scams trick users with fake celebrity endorsements and legitimate-looking cryptocurrency exchange ads that install malware on victims' devices.

Create private chat rooms using the iPhone Notes app collaboration feature with instant messaging capabilities and full control over conversation privacy.

Lyft rolled out safety upgrades with a new Safety Hub, driver blocking capability and a favorite driver option to give riders more control over their experience.

New research shows Americans increasingly trust AI for wellness guidance over social media, with 63% finding artificial intelligence reliable for health.

Luxury fashion brand Dior experienced a January 2025 data breach affecting customer personal information, and notifications were sent months after the discovery.

The commercial Unitree H1 humanoid robot weighs 104 pounds with 365 pound-feet torque per joint and demonstrates dangerous potential when software glitches occur.

Americans average 10-plus hours online daily, according to recent survey, splitting time between streaming shows on TV and browsing websites on multiple devices.

Boost your smartphone privacy instantly with these security tweaks for iPhone and Android that limit ad tracking, hide notifications and prevent unauthorized access.

Platforms like Hoax Tech and JS Click Cloaker help cybercriminals bypass detection systems using machine learning to selectively display scam content to victims.

A new battery recycling technique transforms old lithium-ion batteries into high-performance components that retain 88% capacity after 500 cycles with minimal waste.

Google's Android operating system can warn users about earthquakes before the shaking even begins – and there are ways to do it on your iPhone, too.

Meta's new gesture control wristband might just be the most seamless way to control a computer yet. And no, it doesn't require surgery, a camera, or even a touchscreen. All it needs is your wrist.

Long-haul trucks are now being upgraded with a surprising twist, thanks to California-based startup Revoy. Their electric boost doesn't replace diesel but works alongside it to cut emissions and fuel costs without major disruption.

PayPal and Venmo just rolled out something big: AI-powered scam alerts for Friends and Family payments.

As data centers multiply across the United States, energy demand is increasing at a rapid pace. This has not escaped the notice of large investment firms from Wall Street.

The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that maintains the Unicode Standard to ensure emojis work across devices, has announced Unicode 17.0, which includes nine new emojis slated for release this fall, in September 2025.

OpenAI is one of the world's leading AI research labs. Founded in 2015, it's behind some of today's most talked-about tools, including GPT, DALL·E, and ChatGPT.

Ever catch your dog staring at the screen during movie night and wonder if they're actually watching? Turns out, they might be. A new scientific study from Auburn University found that many dogs really do engage with television, and not all pups react the same way.

Stop the scammers from making contact in the first place. They're getting your parents' contact information and much more personal data besides, from somewhere.

The Walker S2 robot from UBTech autonomously exchanges its batteries in just three minutes, allowing continuous operation in car factories operated by BYD, Nio and Zeekr.

The FX Super One electric MPV from Faraday Future offers flexible seating, zero-gravity recliners and an AI system that creates a personal connection between driver and vehicle.

Practical solutions for reducing unwanted charity mail, political texts and email spam by opting out of shared lists, replying "STOP" and using data removal services.

Starved Spirits, Sorrowful Souls

Spirituality