The Truth in Small Things

I really need to curtail my surfing and get some work done or at least some sleep, but I should let you know that Dawn Eden has written a series of excellent, thought-provoking essays called "The Truth in Small Things". She's on the sixth installment, and I suspect that there is more to come. You can find all of them in the April archive of her blog, the Dawn Patrol.

Here's a highlight, from her third essay:

As for myself, I'm thirsty all the time. I'm also hungry—I can never understand those people who claim that they "forget to eat." But when I read the Scriptures, I realize that I am not hungry enough.

"He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings. And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation" (Psalm 107:35-36).

What does this tell us?

You could say that it means God feeds the hungry, which He does—the next verses say He gives them fields to plant and that he allows their cattle to increase. But there's another meaning in those verses, one which gives me pause:

There is a condition for living in the city of God. And that condition is hunger.

It doesn't say, "God takes the satisfied people and sets them up so they can stay satisfied." It says, "He maketh the hungry to dwell..."

That hunger is a figurative hunger—the same hunger that Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount, when he blesses "they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness" (Matthew 5:6).

When you are hungry, really hungry, it's hard to think about anything else. Likewise, hungering for righteousness means not being able to rest until your hunger is satisfied. As Augustine wrote of God, "Our hearts are restless until we find rest in You."

Today I am going to practice an exercise. Whenever I feel hungry or thirsty, before I fulfill that need, I am going to get in touch with it and try to imagine, just for one moment, how much I really need God for everything in my life. Because "in Him we live and move and have our being," yet "His footsteps are not known." He is so omnipresent that it is possible to go through the day without sensing his presence.

Hunger—real spiritual hunger—is a gift. Cherish it.