By Nita Wilkinson

Faith Editor 

We tend to remember the Prodigal Son for the running father. We remember the younger son leaving home, squandering everything, coming to his senses and finally making his way back. 

We remember the father watching for him, running down the road and throwing his arms around his son. We think about the celebration.

There is another part of the story that deserves our attention. The boy was hungry.

Luke 15 tells us that after the young man had spent everything, a famine swept through the land. He found himself working in a place he never imagined he would be, and eventually, his hunger became so desperate that even the food he was feeding the pigs looked appealing.

Before he thought about his father's house, he thought about food. That detail feels remarkably modern. Famine isn't an old problem. Hunger isn't a problem that belongs only to another country, another century or another kind of person.

It is right here.

According to the United Way of Logan County, 723,280 meals were provided to Logan County residents in 2025. And the organizations providing food assistance are seeing those numbers continue to climb in 2026.

Second Harvest Food Bank, which serves Logan, Clark and Champaign counties, reports that food insecurity has risen from 9.9 percent to 15 percent over the past three years. 

In 2025, Second Harvest served 6,432 unique individuals from our community. Through June of this year, they have already served 4,660.

Those aren't statistics living somewhere on a spreadsheet. Those are neighbors. They are the person standing behind you in the grocery store. The family sitting beside you at church. The older adult who lives down the street. The child whose school lunch might be the most dependable meal of the day. They just may be people we would never have thought of as food insecure.

I've heard several people say recently, "I feel like I'm living paycheck to paycheck.” The striking part isn't that they are living paycheck to paycheck. It's that they didn't used to.

Something has changed. Across Ohio, foodbanks have reported record demand. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks has described the need for emergency food assistance as remaining at extraordinary levels, with food prices, housing costs and the loss or reduction of other supports putting increasing pressure on household budgets. 

The statewide network includes 12 foodbanks and thousands of local hunger-relief programs serving all 88 Ohio counties.

During the federal shutdown in late 2025, the pressure became even more visible. Ohio's foodbanks reported a 46 percent increase in people seeking emergency services during the shutdown, on top of demand that was already significantly higher than it had been several years earlier.

Hunger doesn't always look the way we imagine it. Sometimes it looks like a mother standing in her kitchen trying to figure out how to stretch $20 until Friday. It can be a senior choosing between groceries and a prescription. 

Other times, it looks like a working family whose rent went up, whose utility bill went up, whose grocery expenses went up — and whose paycheck didn’t. And on other occasions, it’s an older adult who simply cannot get to the grocery store anymore.

LifeCare Alliance has seen a 38 percent increase in Meals on Wheels for homebound individuals over the past 3 years. Their work is a reminder that food insecurity isn't only about whether someone has enough money to buy food. Sometimes the problem is whether someone can physically get the food onto the table.

Hunger is often hidden behind a perfectly ordinary front door. That’s one reason I think the Prodigal Son speaks so powerfully to this moment.

We often read the story as being primarily about sin and repentance. And it certainly is a beautiful picture of a God who welcomes us home. But before the boy comes home, he reaches a place of profound need. He is hungry. He has exhausted his resources. Eventually, he has to admit that he cannot fix his situation by himself.

There is something profoundly humbling about needing help. We like independence. We like being the person who can handle it. We like being the one who gives rather than receives. Most of us will eventually find ourselves on both sides of that equation.

The Bible certainly doesn't treat hunger as a new problem. Joseph's brothers traveled to Egypt because famine had devastated their land. Naomi's family left Bethlehem because of famine. Elijah encountered a widow whose resources had dwindled to almost nothing. 

Again and again, Scripture tells stories of people whose circumstances left them without enough.

Famine is not merely a backdrop in these stories. Scripture's response to hunger is remarkably consistent: people are called to care for one another.

That is where I think Logan County has something important to say.

These 723,280 meals don't appear out of thin air. They happen because somebody cared, donated or sorted food. It happens when people deliver a meal, volunteer or open a church pantry. Somebody noticed a neighbor was struggling and somebody else decided that hunger wasn't somebody else's problem. That is what community looks like.

We sometimes talk about food insecurity as though the goal is simply to get food into someone's hands, but I think we can do something even more important. We can remove some of the shame. 

The Prodigal Son had to walk home hungry. I think about how difficult that walk must have been. He wasn't coming home as the successful son who had everything figured out. He was coming home because he had nothing left.

The Prodigal Son’s father didn't stand at the edge of the property with a lecture. He ran. What if this is part of what we are being asked to do as a community, see the hunger and respond.

Because someday, the person who needs the food might be us.

We are not permanently divided into the people who have enough and the people who don’t. Sometimes life changes: jobs disappear, medical bills arrive, cars break down, or rent increases. And sometimes, like the Prodigal Son, we find ourselves in a place we never expected to be.

The good news is that hunger does not have to be faced alone. Our community has organizations, churches, volunteers and neighbors who are already doing the work. Second Harvest Food Bank and its partner agencies serve Logan County as part of a larger network working to make sure people have access to food.

The Prodigal Son eventually made it home. He didn't make the journey because he suddenly became strong enough to handle everything himself. He made it home because he recognized his need, and because there was a father waiting for him. ■