Rather than hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I
hunger and thirst for sin. So I'm thinking what I need is to starve or at least go on a diet.
I’ve never completely made the connection between Adam’s
temptation in the Garden and the idea of being hungry.
It all sort of came together tonight as I was finishing
up Lois Lowry’s The Giver series. In
the series she addresses a range of human characteristics like memory, pain,
history, addiction and evil. Over all
it’s sort of a light-hearted romp.
But [spoiler alert] she brings in the real goods at the end
of the series in The Son. It’s
about a boy who chooses to go hungry rather than give in to his desires and in-so-doing defeats evil.
It reminds me of Jesus in the desert. Here he’s tempted with a number of things and
chief among those is food. He had to be
starving. And then it reminds me of
Israel and Manna. Man this just keeps
going!
But it makes me wonder.
How can we rid ourselves of sin?
I know I’m sick of it. I need to
starve it. And it is possible to cling to Jesus and go
hungry.
If I choose to feast on him and what he provides part of me
dies. But what does that even mean? Sin selfishness is always in front of me. I have to choose what I simply do not
want. And I have to face that I do not
want God, but I desperately need him.
I know I don’t want God and I’m a Christian. Sure there’s a deeper part of me, the blue-haired blonde-eyed Jesus (j/k), part that wants him, but my actions betray me. Stupid actions.
I sound a little defeatist I know. But only in Jesus can I have any victory over
sin. Only in having my very appetites
changed. Only in going hungry.
To ask that he enable me to hunger and thirst for
righteousness is a good place to start I guess.
Plus I don’t like dieting.
