Daily Manna · Day 145 · May 25
Hunger Satisfied
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
Just before the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew shows us Jesus at the end of forty days without food, alone in the wilderness, with the devil telling Him to turn stones into bread.
Matthew puts it simply: "he was afterward an hungred." Then the tempter came and said, "command that these stones be made bread." Jesus answered, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." So when, a chapter later, He sits down on the mountain and says, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness," He is doing more than using a figure of speech. He is the only person on that hillside who has felt both kinds of hunger in one body at the same time, and chosen between them.
Look at whom He blesses. He does not bless people with a mild interest in goodness, or people with correct opinions about it, or people who think they have arrived. He blesses appetite, the ache of someone who feels the gap between the life they are living and the life God calls right. Righteousness in this sermon is more than being declared innocent, because four verses later Jesus blesses "they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake." It must be visible enough to cost somebody something. Then comes the promise: "they shall be filled." The verse does not say who fills them, but the same sermon answers that when it says of the birds, "your heavenly Father feedeth them."
So if you feel that ache, take heart. Usually it is the first sign that God has started His work in you. And the good thing about hunger is that nobody can talk himself into it.
Name one place where your life and God's standard do not line up: your temper at home, your spending, or the story you bend a little in your own favour every time you tell it. Ask Him to make you hungry about that one thing. Then take one step toward it today, small enough that you will really take it, and trust your Father to do the filling.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 145 is All My Desire (Psalm 38:9).