Blessed Are They Which Do Hunger and Thirst


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.


I wonder how many of us who live in first world countries really know what it means to go hungry? And not even the occasional time that I've gone without eating a meal because there wasn't enough food in the house.  And not even going without a meal or two because you're struggling financially.
 But going day after day, not knowing where that next bite of food is coming from? Traveling miles to draw a bucket of water from a well twice a day just to have enough water to survive that day? Watching little children beg in the street for just a crumb of bread to be placed in their bony hands? 

If you were close to starving to death, barely making it through each day - if I told you that you could travel to another town and find a Man who would give you enough food every day for the rest of your life, would you just sit there, and say that it was too much trouble to go to another town? 
I bet you'd start your journey right away, and when you arrived at the other town, you'd search through each house if you had to to find the Man who had the food that would keep you alive. 

I'm sure you see where I'm going with this!

The same way you would search and search for the food that you would die without - this should be the way that we as Christians should search for righteousness. "Give me this, or I will die." Hear the urgency in that starving child's voice, and we should pray this same urgent way. 

Imagine back to that situation, you've found the Man who has the food, but as He stretches out His hand to give you bread, another man comes behind you with bags and bags of gold and silver. If you were on the brink of dying, which would you choose? The bread of life, or the fleeting and temporal gold? 

Give me water and food, or else I die; every thing else is dross and chaff, unsatisfying; give me these, and I have enough, though I had nothing else.”

One observation I thought of while reading this verse it the fact that in the physical world, hunger and thirst come frequently. Salvation brings you into the house full of bread and water, but each time you feel that pang of hunger, you have to reach out and take the bread. When your throat is scratchy with thirst, you have to again take the cup to your lips and drink.

It is the same in the Christian life. We are saved, on our way to heaven, but each day and each moment, we need to be renewed.  

And Christ promises that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled. Not just satisfied, but filled - to the top! At salvation, the hunger to be made clean from the power of sin is filled to the brim. But also each day that we ask Christ to do through us what we don't have, He promises to fill us! And the verb "shall" means that it's an ongoing promise - today he will, and tomorrow he will, and the next and until eternity when we search and hunger after Him.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. 


(photo used from Salvation Army Blog)

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