Diners at Ms. Choi’s restaurant love one North Korean dish more than all the others. It’s called injogogibap. Now that’s a mouthful!

Injogogibap—can you say it yet?—is a street food invented during the famine in North Korea in the 1990s. Back then, injogogibap was the closest thing to meat people could afford. To make it, Ms. Choi uses bits of leftover fried tofu (curd made from soybeans). Normally, those bits would be thrown away. Not during famine! Then people needed every scrap they could get. Ms. Choi scrapes the leftover tofu from pots. She presses it into hot dog-sized tubes. Then she stuffs them with rice. Injogogibap gets its flavors from random pots and does a good job filling hungry bellies.

Even after escaping to South Korea, North Koreans live difficult lives. They often have little education. Their South Korean neighbors call them “chon-nom,” which means “bumpkin.” They don’t belong. They are hungry for a safe place that feels and tastes like home.

What food tastes like home to you? It is a warm chocolate chip cookie with milk, a gooey bowlful of macaroni and cheese, or your mom’s mashed potatoes? When God made our bodies and food, He had good in mind for us. He uses food not just to keep us alive and healthy but to give us comfort. Can God comfort you through a bowl of ice cream? You bet!

God also uses our hunger to point to a bigger reality. We have spiritual hunger and thirst that only He can satisfy. Like the North Koreans in South Korea, Christians are pilgrims. We live on Earth. But we don’t really belong here. We are going to our real home—heaven. We will be with God there. He will satisfy every longing we have.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. — John 6:35