Man sometimes I’m just hungry. Not the hungry that you get when you want a snack, but the kind of hungry that if you don’t eat you get cranky. I get hungry for a delicious and juicy hand-pressed hamburger. I also love a good homemade, grilled pizza. I’ve been known to eat a good steak. Well, if you really must know, I just kind of like food. Not sure about you but just writing this is making me a bit hungry.
But there’s another kind of hunger that is pretty important. There’s a hunger that won’t be taken care of even by a Snickers. It just can’t satisfy this hunger. It’s a hunger for something more, something bigger, something of greater substance.
I’ve done a lot of observing lately. I’ve been quietly listening to conversations, watching people’s movements, reading body language. And I’ve discovered something pretty interesting. Everyone is hungry! We’re all hungry for just about the same thing. We all hunger for some form of acceptance.
Some of us hunger for this acceptance from teachers or bosses. Others look for it from parents, while still others from friends and co-workers. We all have a need to be validated. We want people to recognize us, maybe not publicly, but at least an acknowledgement would be nice from time to time.
But something strange happens when our hunger isn’t met with the accolades we’ve been anticipating. When our audience is less than enthusiastic about our achievements, we tend to second guess our very purpose. We cower inside ourselves. We fear rejection. We wonder if we’ve done enough.
This week brings a celebration of something called the Reformation. For more about that, go here. But the long and short of the Reformation is that we are accepted, not because of our accomplishment, but because of Jesus’ work completed on the cross. Nothing we could ever do would leave us with that warm and fuzzy feeling of being good enough.
So back to that hunger for attention. When we’re in the middle of a crazy, chaotic and stressful life situation remember that we already have the attention we need. It’s the attention of our heavenly father. There’s a great song that reminds us that in those times when it seems like no one cares, our father sets a table for us. He knows our hunger and our thirst. He gives us everything we need to quench the pains of that hunger.
He doesn’t just set that table in the good moments but he puts the fine china out even in front of our enemies and in the darkest of times. He knows our needs better than we even know them! Today, take a minute and dine at the table of the Lord. Quench your thirst with the water he gives. Know that no matter what the world tells you, in Christ you are enough.
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