Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Jesus)
Our school is a Christian school. Therefore, the teachings of Jesus are to permeate every part of all that we do. Jesus gave us lots of teachings and some of you are already familiar with His teachings. For some of you, the sayings of Jesus are new.
To find out what Jesus said, we look in the Christian Bible. Jesus is quoted throughout the Gospels, and the Gospels are sub-books within the Bible. There are four Gospels written by four different writers named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These Gospels are the parts of the Bible that tell us about what Jesus did and said when He lived among people here on earth.
As you may know, we Christians believe that Jesus was God in human form. That belief is pretty much central to our Christian faith. God came to earth in the form of an ordinary person. He was fully human, and yet fully God, and in the Gospels, Jesus says lots of normal everyday things. But He also makes some pretty amazing statements. And really, to a Christian, it is not surprising that lots of the statements Jesus made are remarkable, because our belief is that Jesus was God on earth.
One wonderful declaration that Jesus makes is this: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” In other words, Jesus is saying that the person who is desperate that wrongs be righted will see that hope fulfilled.
This statement about hungering and thirsting is usually thought to mean that the way to find genuine spiritual fulfilment and deep joy is through a restored relationship with God. The reasoning is that as we seek a restored relationship with God, we discover that it is only through God that we can find satisfaction for our inmost self. A right relationship with God is thought of by Christians as the beginning of restoring all our relationships. Getting ‘right with God’ is the way to get right with everyone and everything else.
Repairing our relationship with God is not quite something that we can do ourselves… we need to ask for Him to do it. That’s not weird when you think about it. We are the ones who have moved away from God, so all we need to do is talk to Him and ask that he moves us back, close again to Him; sounds simple, because it is simple.
If we choose to humbly ask God to restore our relationship with Him, we will find He is ready to lift us out of our low state. God’s love can lift a soul, especially when that soul has no more energy to lift itself.
Let’s keep that in the forefront of our thoughts, that our school is a Christian school, so the teachings of Jesus must permeate every part of all that we do.
David Gleeson, Principal