Now that I’m retired I’m trying to devote more of my time to prayer. Since September, I’ve been participating in two Bible studies at my church: the gospel of Matthew and the Bible Timeline (an overview of salvation history).
This week in the Matthew study, we’ve been reading chapter 5, which begins Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. As a follow-up to our work this week, I’ve been meditating on the Beatitudes, which are a central theme in the chapter. Below are my thoughts on the fourth Beatitude: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
To hunger and thirst for righteousness, I think, is to hunger and thirst for God, for He alone is without sin. We were created to know, love, and serve God, so it is only in Him that we find true happiness. As St. Augustine put it, “Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”
To hunger and thirst is more than just a desire, more than just, “I could sure go for a Coke right now.”
Thirst is more of an inner longing. It involves pain and a sense of urgency. Webster’s dictionary says that to thirst is “to crave vehemently and urgently.”
When someone is dying of thirst, he must drink or he will die. The human body can last many days or weeks without food or rest. The same is not true, however, of water. Almost every function in our bodies depends on water, so without it we will die very quickly.
In the same way, our spiritual selves need God, who is the life-giving water for our souls. Without Him, we will perish.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, He said, “I thirst.” His thirst was not just for water, but for souls, for us, even for those who were putting Him to death.
Jesus still thirsts for souls. We can help ease his thirst when we thirst for Him and when we pray as He taught us: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When we thirst for this, as Jesus did, and when we do our part to bring it about, we will comfort Jesus, and we ourselves will be satisfied, for we will be doing the work for which we were created.
