Holy Hunger

Holy Hunger

Read: Luke 6:20-22

“Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.”

Luke 6:21

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that cannot be filled by any created thing but only by the Creator.”

—Blaise Pascal

IN WORD Hunger doesn’t feel very blessed. It feels like discontentment, and that makes us feel guilty. But there is a holy hunger that God blesses, and whether we know it or not, all of us have felt it acutely.

Deep in the soul of every man, woman, and child is a void that nags us for attention. We think it’s a sign of dysfunction, and we try to heal it ourselves. Some of us fill it with food, but the sense of taste is only satisfied for a moment. Some of us try to fill it with moving from place to place or possession to possession, but the sense of adventure constantly craves a new direction. Some of us try to fill it with relationships, but that void can’t be lastingly filled with another person. Some of us recognize that nothing has ever filled it and probably nothing ever will, so we get counseling to try to determine the psychological source of this persistent pathology. If we can’t fill it, we try to deny it; if we can’t deny it, we try to change it; if we can’t change it, we try to fill it again. One day, if we’re spiritually sensitive, we understand: It’s a holy hunger, and only God can fix it.

IN DEED Jesus says the hungry are blessed. Why? Because the truly hungry have given up trying to satisfy themselves with the wrong things. They’ve found that gratifying the senses isn’t ultimately gratifying, and that pursuing meaningful relationships isn’t the ultimate in meaning. They’ve found that all of our raging appetites are really a sad reminder that we have a deeper hunger for the eternal. That God-shaped vacuum that Pascal spoke of can only be filled with God—not possessions, not people, not places. God may freely bless us with all these things in abundance, but only after we’ve found our contentment in Him alone. He is no enemy of the things He’s created, but He opposes them becoming the focus of our lives. Those who have quenched their hunger with the things of this world have settled for empty calories; they’re ultimately unsatisfied. The blessing of true hunger leads us to Jesus, the Bread of Life.