Thursday, October 16, 2003

Hungry? Why Wait?

G.K. Chesterton once said, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." It seems that all of us seek transcendence through tangible means. It's people, or possessions, or power. But we never find the taste that will satisfy our hunger. We are people of indulgence because we are seekers at heart. We want to find the one thing that will bring us wholeness.

Recently I have been reading through the Sermon on the Mount and something has jumped off the page. Jesus says, "blessed (a word meaning 'happy') are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness."

Most of us spend our time chasing phantom dreams of power and influence, far fewer of us hunger for righteousness. I wonder if we would find the scratch that would finally cure the itch if we took Jesus seriously?

It's more than apparent that pursuing the other lovers of life will not and cannot make us happy: a drinker keeps drinking, a eater keeps eating, the greedy never stop cheating and the unfaithful spouse keep being unfaithful. Our endless courtship with undesirable lovers often leaves us believing that the desirous one would not want us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God pursues us with a relentless, ferocious longing to win our hearts.

It seems that if we were at all astute, we would chose the God who has already chosen us. As Oswald Chambers has written, "There is only One Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ."

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