Sometimes there is no worse than being hungry and surrounded by the most appetizing things and yet unable to partake of any of it. It's the torturous feeling you get while you sit in a restaurant waiting for your food and everyone else's goes sizzling by you. Leaving you only with the sights and sounds of something delicious not intended for you. Ok...now that you are reliving that moment...hold that thought.
In Song of Songs at the beginning of chapter 3 we find a bride who has enjoyed the great abundance and luxury of the king, but now is invited off of the mountains outside of her home of comfort she and her King have shared. He doesn't shout at her to come to these hills and mountains, but instead He speaks to her about how things are actually a ton more delightful with Him than she even knows yet. He is aware that she is not mature yet in her devotion. She loves Him. She loves wonderful qualities that He gives so freely for her to experience. But her picture of Him is not yet whole. He knows that. And He has a plan... He is going to leave. (Sound familiar?)
Let's bring this up close and personal to us now.
Jesus does not use some sadistic form of absence to punish us. He has something He wants us to see about Him that our perspective wont currently allow. He wants us to experience the victory of His overcoming. That He truly is our only hope and satisfaction in life. He wants to be precious to us, not simply convienent. He calls us forward by letting the sting of divine hunger drive us to a place we wouldn't go otherwise. This is His gift to us to overcome the fears, insecurities, disappointments, the list goes on that have kept us from standing up in some areas. Now again, He is looking at us like the Song of Songs bride...she's immature, but beautiful to Him. He won't bark at His wife, but instead will call her to be His partner in what He is wanting to do. We have been joined to Bridegroom that has an agenda, an assignment He has to do in all of creation...redemption. But He wants us with Him. This is not because He has to...He wants this! He wants us! He calls us according to His desire for us, but asks us to answer His desire by drawing near to Him in the ways and places He has called us.
Think about this for a second...why did God create Adam? Why Eve? Then why only them in His image? Did He just want diversity of created things to just pedal around the earth or did He have intention, purpose, plan for us to do something with Him that nothing else in all of creation could ever do? He is making us hungry for being with Him again. We are invaluable to Him, because He made us to be invaluable. We have a role and a part to play and He is passionate to include us in the execution of His purposes in the world. So He has given us hunger to cause us to arise and press into some our most vulnerable fears, wounds and lack to reach for Him. O let us grow only more hungry for the gifts that He alone can give. The revelation of our beauty, the power to overcome, faith to experience Him in powerful ways. Our escort to satisfaction, faith and encounters we most long for...His hand upon us, His voice in our ear, is found in hungering for Him beyond anything else in this world.
So here is the promise we cling to. Thank you God.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." Matt. 5:6
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