Be Still And Know

READ: Matthew 5.6 NLT God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied. I wonder when you last felt painfully hungry or thirsty. I suspect for most of us that, if it has ever happened, it is a distant memory. However, it is likely that Jesus’ hearers would have been very familiar with both. Harvests could be good or bad, and it was impossible to achieve a reliable flow of food. Additionally in a hot country people would often have felt desperately thirsty, and finding a good supply of clean water would never have been easy. Jesus wanted his followers to have just this kind of desperate longing for God’s will to be done in the world and for his justice to be established. Christianity suffers desperately from those who give it merely polite agreement. They live respectable and kindly lives and consider that Christian faith is generally a very good thing. Jesus is looking for something completely different. He wants us to have the same passion for his kingdom as a hungry and thirst