Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

“My mouth’s so dry I can’t even spit.”

Our youngest son was camping with his grandparents one weekend. He and his grandmother decided to take a little walk to a grocery store she remembered nearby. It turned out to be not nearly as close as she thought. By the time they arrived, hot and tired and desperate, the store was closed.

That boy summed up the whole situation perfectly.

Maybe you know that kind of thirst. The kind where your mouth goes cottony and your legs feel weak and all you can think about is water. Maybe you know that kind of hunger too. The kind where your stomach stops growling and starts aching and nothing else matters until you are filled.

Jesus knew his audience.

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

The people sitting on that hillside knew exactly what physical hunger felt like. Under Roman oppression, living in poverty, many of them went to bed with empty stomachs and woke up the same way. When Jesus used the words hunger and thirst, they weren’t abstract concepts. They were yesterday’s reality.

But Jesus was teaching something so much richer than food and drink.

He adds two words that change everything. For righteousness.

Righteousness means living in right relationship with God and with one another. It means being and doing exactly what we were created for rather than wandering in rebellion against it. When we hunger for righteousness we are aching to see wrongs made right. In ourselves. In our families. In our world.

In other words, this is the ache for God to make things right. In us. Around us. In this broken world we live in.

This is not an ache for a comfortable life. It is a craving for His presence. A yearning to know our heavenly Father more deeply than we did yesterday.

David knew this desperation. In Psalm 42 he wrote:

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2 (NIV)

Not for answers. Not for circumstances to improve. For God himself.

As a mother, I have known this hunger in ways that brought me to my knees. There have been seasons when my heart has longed for God to make things right, for my children, for my family, for situations completely outside my control. In those moments, I didn’t need a self-help plan. I needed His presence. And so I prayed. Sometimes with words and sometimes with nothing but tears. And He answered. Through His Word, landing exactly where I needed it. Through friends walking beside me and praying over me. Through that quiet, unmistakable sense that I was not alone in it.

He always showed up.

Now think about a long car trip with children or grandchildren. You know exactly what happens about two hours in.

“I’m starving.” “I can’t wait.” “Are we almost there?”

That is the intensity Jesus is describing. Not a polite preference for righteousness. A desperate, can’t-wait, I-need-it-now hunger for God to be in control. For things to be made right. For His Kingdom to break through.

And here is the promise attached to that hunger.

He fills us. Not with temporary fixes or quick solutions. With Himself. With His Spirit transforming us from the inside out. With glimpses of His Kingdom breaking through even now, in the middle of ordinary Tuesday afternoons.

And one day — one glorious day — we will be completely and finally filled. No more sorrow. No shame. No guilt. Every wrong made right. Every tear wiped away.

Charles Wesley caught a glimpse of that day and wrote words that have been sung by the church for centuries. The vision he painted in “Love Divine All Loves Excelling” is of a people utterly transformed, changed from glory into glory, finally and fully restored, lost in wonder, love, and praise before the throne of God.

That is what we are hungering for, dear friend. Not just a better day tomorrow. The complete restoration of all things.

And it begins right here. Right now. With an open and hungry heart turned toward the Father who has been waiting to fill it.

What are you truly hungry for today? Is it His presence, His peace, His righteousness breaking through in a specific situation? Bring that hunger to Him. He does not turn away an empty, open heart.