Blessed are...

Hungry for the Wrong Things March 6

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Matthew 5:6

The world is full of people trying to assuage their hunger and thirst with all the wrong things. We hunger for community, so we think that we can buy it along with a bottle in a bar. We hunger for warmth and meaningful relationships, but we look in all the wrong places. We want security, so we build bigger barns to hold the things we do not really need. We want peace, so we fight to win control. We want God, so we make Him in our own, flawed image, then complain. We spend our lives hungry, thirsty, searching.

Lucifer, the ambitious angel, lusted after the power of God.[1] Nebuchadnezzar, the proud king, boasted of great Babylon and dreamed of the extension of his empire.[2] Both fell. And we fall when we substitute our desires for the will of God. He does not want us to waste our days hungering after things that will not satisfy us. We will be filled only when we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

To seek the satisfaction God wills for His people, is to strive for peace – with God, with ourselves, and with our neighbors. Peace comes when we are in a right relationship, when our desires are in conformity with God’s desires. What good does it do us, if we find what we have been looking for, only to discover that we have been searching for the wrong thing? How much better to seek what God desires, for when we find it, then we shall be satisfied.



Heavenly Father,
I confess that I have not always looked in the right places.
I have been restless, my days and nights have been spent searching,
but I have not sought Your will, Your way.
Turn me from my preoccupation with the things of this world
to things eternal.
Turn me to Christ.
In His name, and for His glory.
Amen.



[1] Isaiah 14:12
[2] Daniel 4:33