Are You Hungry?

November 7, 2021

One of my favorite Bible passages is Psalm 37:4—“Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.” One of the reasons I like it is its promise that God will give us our own hearts’ desires if we delight in him. It doesn’t say he will give us the desires of his heart, but of our own. That he gives such a wide open promise is an amazing example of how much God loves and trusts those who delight in him. God is in the business of blessing his own.

Recent experiences have reminded me that this promise doesn’t always play out the way we expect. We all have hearts’ desires that are good, and God-honoring, that just don’t pan out. Though we can trust in this promise, God isn’t a divine vending machine where we can push our holiness and good works through the slot, and out pops whatever blessing we want to claim when we push the prayer button. There is always more to life than we are able to see in our finite wisdom. I for one, have much yet to learn in this department.

Just this morning, I was reading this psalm again, and noticed the third verse: “Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.” The last phrase in this verse jumped out at me: “Feed on his faithfulness.” 

Too often, we feed on our fears or sorrow; we eat anger and resentment like candy, drink envy and bitterness instead of feeding on, and lingering over God’s faithfulness, savoring its flavor and texture. The world’s fast food of media, entertainment, of divisiveness and race or economic-baiting, is making us sick. We don’t need merely to diet, but to take an extended fast from it all. Merely cutting down won’t begin to cure our addiction to this world’s poison-laden fare. We need to break its hold upon us. The more we feed on it, the more we want it and the less we hunger for God.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good,” declares Psalm 34:8. When our children were small, a friend invited us to his beautiful old Victorian home with 12 foot ceilings, oak and butternut paneling in living room, parlor, and dining rooms. He set before us a full seven course meal which we savored slowly. “Children need to learn to dine, not merely eat,” he declared solemnly. He was right in more ways than one. Fine dining has given way to drive in fast food which cannot satisfy both body and soul. In reality, it cannot even satisfy the body that grows bloated and flaccid as we we ingest it. 

If this is true of our physical bodies, it is no less so for our souls. Feeding on the faithfulness of God is the only diet that will nourish and strengthen us to face the challenges and the societal and spiritual pandemic sweeping across our land. The world’s food is only making us sicker, and making our need to feed on God’s faithfulness more acute. His table is set; dinner time has come. Is anyone hungry?