Hunger and thirst
Jesus, on holy appetite
Among the blessings Jesus pronounces on the mountainside, one is built entirely out of appetite. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, he says, for they shall be filled. He does not bless those who have already arrived at righteousness, or those who feel they have enough of God. He blesses the ones who are starving for it.
The images are deliberately physical — not a polite preference for goodness but the raw, driving need of the famished and the parched, the hunger that hurts and the thirst that consumes every other thought. This is the language the disciplines have been training all along: fasting teaches the body to feel its hunger and turn it toward God, until the soul's appetite for righteousness grows as sharp as the stomach's for bread.
And the promise on the far side is unconditional: they shall be filled. The one appetite in all the universe that is guaranteed satisfaction is the hunger for God and his righteousness. Every other craving overpromises and leaves us empty again by evening. This one, Jesus says, ends in fullness — but it begins, always, with being hungry.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
— Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount — Matthew 5:6 (WEB)
Welcome a deep hunger and thirst for God as a blessing, not a deficiency — the one appetite he guarantees to fill.
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, God.”
A dulled appetite feels exactly like contentment from the inside, which is why we mistake the loss of holy hunger for spiritual peace and never go looking for what went quiet. The interior work is to suspect the calm — to notice when the craving for righteousness has fallen silent — and to let each discipline clear out the cheap fillers until the real hunger aches again.
This week, notice what you reach for to quiet the inner ache — the scroll, the snack, the distraction — and deliberately set it down, letting yourself feel the hunger and turn it toward God instead of numbing it.
The enemy will not bother making you crave God too much; he need only keep you grazing on lesser things until the deep hunger goes quiet and you call the numbness peace. Let that ache reawaken, though, and it leads straight to the one fullness Jesus guaranteed — the panting soul always reaches the stream.
It is a strange feature of the spiritual life that the blessed ones here are not the satisfied but the starving. The danger is never that we hunger too much for God; it is that we hunger too little — that we have dulled our appetite with lesser fillers until the deep craving for righteousness has gone quiet and we no longer feel the lack. A soul that has stopped being hungry for God is in far greater danger than one that aches.
This is the deepest reason behind every discipline in this stage. Prayer, the Word, fasting, silence — they are all, finally, ways of reawakening and feeding a holy hunger, of clearing out the cheap snacks so the real appetite returns. For the one appetite Jesus guarantees to satisfy is this one. So do not be discouraged by your hunger for God; be discouraged only by its absence. The ache itself is the blessing, and the panting deer always reaches the stream.
- Am I hungry for God, or have I dulled the ache with lesser fillers?
- What cheap snacks have quieted my appetite for righteousness?
- Could my very hunger for God be the blessing, not the problem?
Lord, I have numbed my hunger for you with lesser things until the ache went quiet. Reawaken it. Make me pant for you as the deer for the stream, and fill the one appetite you have promised to satisfy. Amen.