Quenching Your Real Hunger & Thirst

Today, in parts of Africa, India, and Latin America, thousands die of malnutrition and its accompanying diseases.  Hunger is like war and pestilence.  It kills.  It consumes.

I’ve never really known hunger like that.  I’m “starving” if it’s 2:00, and I haven’t eaten lunch yet…but I recognize that’s not really “starving.”  I’ve also been very thirsty on a summer day with 3-digit temperatures.  I’ve been “parched”, hiking in the Grand Canyon and other hot places…but that’s not really “thirsty”, either.

When Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” he used a Hebrew word meaning an “acute lack of food.”   According to Eerdmans Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, this word was used for the exhaustion caused by a military campaign or a desert journey.

We must recognize that all the hunger horrors imaginable grow pale when compared to the horror of unfulfilled spiritual hunger and unquenched spiritual thirst.  Unsaved people thirst for happiness and hunger for fulfillment, but they seek it in the wrong places.  Spiritual hunger is the characteristic of all God’s people.  Our supreme ambition is not material but spiritual.  The fourth beatitude deals with our appetite for the things of God.

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Learning from the Giants on Senior Citizens Day

Today is National Senior Citizens Day in the United States.  Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan declared August 21 to be National Senior Citizens Day—celebrated one week after the anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act in 1935.

When I think of Senior Citizens, I have long been impacted by their wisdom and life experiences.  As an elementary student, I remember forming relationships with senior citizens that my Dad and I picked up on Sunday mornings to go to church.  I even interviewed one of them for a personal biography project at school.

At work, I have sought out mentors with more life experience.  Today, some of them who have been retired for many years, still provide their advice and perspective for both work and life challenges.

So, today, I want to pause and give honor to Senior Citizens and reflect on some of the older leaders from the Bible.  To do that, I’ve summarized John Maxwell’s 2014 book, Learning from the Giants.

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