When We Work We Eat
Bob Reader is a long-time friend of Impact Foundation, having launched one of our first investments. Currently, Bob serves as Founder and CEO of Emerging Fields, a nonprofit evergreen fund investing in Kingdom Impact Businesses. He wrote a helpful post wrestling with the massive increase in hunger and poverty since Covid-19 swept the globe. This is an important Biblical perspective and prayer for the faith-driven business community during this season.
The U.N. is predicting that because of COVID-19 and the global lockdown, there could be 265 million people starving by the end of the year. This news is truly devastating, overwhelming. It is another crushing blow to an already distressing 2020.
AND YET, it should not surprise us. A world on "lockdown" can't work. If we don't work, we don't eat.
We must understand:
Work is worship! We honor God through our work.
Work was created before sin entered into the world. It is part of God’s perfect creation.
God does not call us all to be preachers, but He does call all of us to the work He has given us.
Our work matters to God! He refines us through our work, drawing us closer to Him.
As we work, we are His witnesses to a lost and dark world, pointing them to the Light of Christ. Among the missionary workforce globally, those engaged in Kingdom businesses were better able to stay in-country. Their businesses are “essential,” not because a government said so, but because when we work, we eat. Moreso, as Christians, how we run our businesses shows a dark world what it looks like to live out the pandemic without fear, due to the Hope we have in Christ.
This year in Laos, we still anticipate producing 22,000 pigs, same as we did last year. In a nation that has long suffered malnutrition, we are still the light of Christ, not only in sharing the gospel with all we meet, but also in providing them food when they are hungry.
Will you join us in a lament for the anticipated losses due to starvation?
Father, with much sorrow we call on you and beg your forgiveness.
We have determined our own way, out of fear and control, what seemed right in our own eyes, and yet it now seems hundreds of millions will suffer for it.
And yet, You are the One who feeds the sparrow, and You love us so much more. Of the millions who may soon suffer, You know each of them by name, You knit them in their mother’s womb and know every hair on their head. Please protect them. Please provide for them.
Help us to know how to bring the “fish and loaves,” so You can feed the masses with a miracle. Lord, we are sorry for our actions and inactions. Lead us in the way we should go. Forgive our sinful pride.
For Yours is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever. Amen
