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Pizza on Earth
As I was driving my older two kids to school not too long ago, the topic of Santa Claus came up. I decided to ask them what they wanted for Christmas, and if they had asked Santa for something in particular. My older child had a few ideas, many of which I had already heard before. My middle child, on the other hand, had either not really been paying attention when I asked the question, or was pretty content with what he had in life. He told me he didn’t know, and so I jokingly asked him, “So you want peace on earth for Christmas, right?” His incredulous response: “Pizza on Earth?!”
Poor listening skills aside (I’ll give him a break – he’s four, after all), I realized that “pizza on earth” is actually a pretty good tagline for something that would do the world a lot of good, and probably be beneficial for peace in our world. We live in a world where there is a spirit of scarcity. As has been lifted up in our recent ELCA World Hunger initiative, there are many places in the world where a person’s next meal is not guaranteed. That type of scarcity is a real problem, and it’s hard to have a stable society when the most basic things aren’t guaranteed. Peace and security have a deep connection to a concept of abundance and stability. So thinking about it, pizza on earth probably would cause a dramatic increase in overall peace on earth.
As we come close to concluding our hunger appeal, I’m wondering – how much peace on earth has been cultivated by how we are providing meals for people in need? Is it possible that our entire world could be changed for the better if people felt as if they had enough? Do we feel as if we have enough? Family of God, today, as we look toward the coming of Christ, I invite you to dwell deeply into knowing that in Jesus, we are all given more than we could possibly need. May we all share of our own abundance, so that more people in this world might have enough, and through this blessing to others, bring about the promise of peace on earth that we all long for in this holy season.
Help Esperanza meet the challenge – ELCA World Hunger Initiative