From the book ‘Trusting Jesus,’ Jeffrey R. Holland wrote:
Some time ago, I read an essay referring to “metaphysical hunger” in the world. The author was suggesting that the souls of men and women were dying, so to speak, from lack of spiritual nourishment in our time. That phrase, “metaphysical hunger,” came back to me last month when I read many richly deserved tributes paid to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. One correspondent recalled her saying that as severe and wrenching as physical hunger was in our day—something she spent virtually her entire life trying to alleviate—nevertheless, she believed that the absence of spiritual strength, the *paucity of spiritual nutrition, was an even more terrible hunger in the modern world.
These observations reminded me of the chilling prophecy from the prophet Amos, who said so long ago, ” Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor of thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11)
As the world slouches into the twenty-first century, many long for something, sometimes cry out for something, but too often scarcely know for what. The economic condition in the world, speaking generally and certainly not specifically, is probably better than it has ever been in history, but the human heart is still anxious and often filled with great stress. We live in an information age that has the world of data available literally at our fingertips, yet the meaning of that information and the satisfaction of using knowledge in some moral context seems farther away for many than ever before.
The price for building on such sandy foundation is high. Too many lives are buckling when the storms come and the winds blow (See Matt. 7:24-27). In almost any direction we see those who are dissatisfied with present luxuries because of a gnawing fear that others somewhere have more than them. In a world desperately in need of moral leadership, too often we see what Paul called “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). In an absolutely terrifying way we see legions who say they are bored with their spouses, their children, and any sense of marital or parental responsibility toward them. Still others, roaring full speed down the dead-end road of hedonism, shout they will indeed live by bread alone, and the more of it the better. We have it on good word, indeed we have it from the Word Himself, that bread alone—even a lot of it—is not enough. (See Matthew 4:4; John 1:1).
During the Savior’s Galilean ministry, He chided those who had heard of Him feeding the 5,000 with only five barley loaves and two fishes and now flocked to Him expecting a free lunch. That food, important as it was, was incidental to the real nourishment He was trying to give them.
“Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead,” He admonished them. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.”
But this was not the meal they came for, and the record says, “From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him” (John 6:49, 51,66).
In that little story is something of danger in our day. It is that in our contemporary success and sophistication we, too, may walk away from the vitally crucial bread of eternal life; we may actually choose to be spiritually malnourished, willfully indulging in a kind of spiritual anorexia. Like those childish Galileans of old, we may turn up our noses when divine sustenance is placed before us. Of course the tragedy then as now is that one day, as the Lord Himself has said, “In an hour when ye think not the summer shall be past, and the harvest ended,” and we will find our “souls [are] not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20, Doctrine and Covenants 45:2). ~Jeffrey R. Holland, Trusting Jesus (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 2003), 9-11 (continued)
- paucity – ‘smallness of number or quantity (Oxford dictionary)
