Hunger Satisfied

A man at the end of forty days without food, in a wilderness, being offered bread by somebody who can produce it.

That is the last thing Matthew shows you before the mountain. He was afterward an hungred, Matthew says, and the tempter came, and the answer given was that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. So when he sits down a chapter later and blesses those which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, he is not borrowing a figure of speech. He is the only person on that hillside who has held both hungers in one body at the same hour and chosen between them.

Notice what he does not bless. Not mild interest. Not correct opinions about righteousness. Not people who have arrived. He blesses appetite, the ache of somebody who feels the gap between the life they are living and the life God calls right. And righteousness in this sermon is not merely a verdict of innocence; four verses on he blesses those persecuted for righteousness' sake, which means it is visible enough to cost somebody something. Then the promise, and it is passive: they shall be filled. Filled by whom is not left in any doubt elsewhere in the chapter.

The ache is not evidence that you have failed. It is usually the first evidence God has started work, and the useful thing about hunger is that nobody can talk himself into it.

So name one place where your life and God's standard do not line up. The temper at home. The spending. The story you shade slightly in your own favour every time you tell it. Ask him for hunger about that one thing, and take a single visible step toward it today, small enough that you will actually take it.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 145 is All My Desire (Psalm 38:9).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna