In this Season of Creation, Jeroham Meléndez, communications officer for the Diocese of Costa Rica, explores food wastage.
We are approaching the end of the season of creation, in our Church in Costa Rica, this is the third year that we’ve celebrated it. After ACC16, our National Convention recognised the resolutions that have to do with the care of God’s creation and we launched a campaign: “Live your faith naturally” which fundamental purpose is to motivate us to nourish our Christian faith by a constant reflection on how we recognise the acts of God in everything that surrounds us and that in doing so it is our duty is to honour that we receive by his grace.
A few weeks ago during a class taught by my rector and pastor, the Revd Eduardo Chinchilla, we studied the miracle of the loaves and fishes and how before giving them to his disciples Jesus blessed them (Matthew 14:19), Then, Chinchilla pointed out the difference between giving thanks for food and blessing the food.
When something is blessed, it is then sanctified; we understand that something in it is different. When we bless our meals we understand that God is present in our lives and that having a meal in front of us chains a series of blessings that includes work, health, talent, capacity, well-being, love, the good land and crops, a productive chain that triggers the economy employing many people and many other things.
Then, why do we see so often that our rubbish bins are filled with food almost in the same proportion as our plates are filled?
Approximately 72 billion pounds of perfectly good food from every point in the food production cycle ends up in landfills and incinerators every year. Roughly 805 million people go undernourished on a daily basis.
How much of that wasted food makes their way to those landfills from the tables and plates of Christians who have said prayers and given thanks for those meals?
Living our faith naturally, means that we make an effort to do God’s will, it means that we not only say a few words before eating but that we really recognise God in our lives, that we long for the discipline of prayer and the discomfort of not following the easy way but the difficult one.
The next time we sit down to eat let’s be responsible, let’s serve only the portion that we are going to eat and let’s take the time to bless what we can enjoy by the grace of God, then let’s nourish our bodies with joy and gratitude, doing what we are supposed to do with what has been blessed.