:: greatness is a life well-lived ::

an inconsolable longing

We all feel it...an inconsolable longing, a desire for something else, for satisfaction...This is an amazing sermon that hits it dead-on, encourages and challenges me to wake up and recognize what's happening...I'm only excerpting part of it, but I encourage you to read the rest when you get a chance.


Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Some of the most evocative words in the Old Testament come from Ecclesiastes 3:11.
God has made everything beautiful in its time; also He has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

What does this mean: that God has put eternity in man's mind and yet has withheld from us the vision of what He has done from everlasting to everlasting?

St. Augustine said:
Thou madest us for Thyself,
and our heart is restless,
until it rest in Thee.

Restlessness and longing are universal traits of the human heart. George Herbert, one of the poets I came to love during my college days, wrote a poem called The Pulley which goes like this:

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by—
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone, of all His treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said He)
Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.

God has put eternity in our hearts and we have an inconsolable longing. We try to satisfy it with scenic vacations, accomplishments of creativity, stunning cinematic productions, sexual exploits, national sports extravaganzas, hallucinogenic drugs, ascetic rigors, managerial excellence, etc., etc. But the longing remains.

Isaiah put it like this in 55:2-3:
Why do you spend your money
for that which is not bread,
and your labor
for that which does not satisfy?
Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in abundance.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear that your soul may live.

And Jeremiah, like this in 2:12-13:
My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Many of you here this morning are like this. Your soul is hungry and your heart is thirsty. You feel an insatiable longing for something. You are restless. Almost everywhere you turn the grass is greener than where you stand. And the great tragedy for some of you is that even though this is the Spirit of God beckoning you to himself, you turn away again and again to short-run, temporary, backfiring pleasures...And everything turns to ashes in your hands.

We drink at broken cisterns. And we eat bread which does not satisfy. And the words of C.S. Lewis ring more and more true. He said:
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Jesus has something to say to us this morning about this universal experience of an inconsolable longing. He has something to say about the insatiable hunger of the human heart, and about the relentless thirst of our soul. His words are found in Matthew 5:6 where he says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

What I would like to do is simply meditate with you on two things: l) the nature of the righteousness that Jesus has in view, and 2) the nature of our hunger and thirst for it, and how that hunger turns into the satisfaction which he promises.......

.....The hunger and the thirst of your life that cannot be satisfied by anything in this world is the constant beckoning of God to remember that you were made for another world, you were made for God.

But let us be very careful at this point. For just here we could make a very dangerous mistake. We could withdraw from the world. We could become monks or nuns or forest rangers. But just here is where the words of Jesus become all-important—to keep us from making that mistake.

Jesus says that the people who will be satisfied in the end are not people who have gone off into the woods to find solitary communion with God. Rather they are the people whose hunger and thirst has been for righteousness, people who have craved for the grace to be merciful, people who have yearned for radical purity of thoughts and feelings, people who have passionately desired to make peace......

.........Deep and lasting satisfaction for our souls comes not from the the delights of the world nor from a merely religious or vertical relationship with with God. Satisfaction comes from God to those whose passion in life is to know him in the struggle to be like him in the world (Matt 5:48).

So to children this morning I would say, Don't just make believe that you are that prince who leads his army out against the forces of evil and risks his life to do what is right and to save the kingdom. Don't just pretend that you are that captive princess who escapes from the villain's dungeon and crosses swollen rivers and and snake-infested deserts to warn the king of danger. Don't settle for the desires of make believe! BE that prince someday! BE that princess someday!

The great tales of the future will be written of real men and women who were passionately committed to one thing—the righteousness of God.

Make it the passion and the hunger and the thirst of your life to do great acts of righteousness.

(read the rest of the sermon here)

posted by FaithChristine @ 17:05