I have been meditating on Luke 6:20-26, commonly known as the beatitudes.  I’m tempted to go into a full blown dissertation of the passage, but I will treat it more like a summary. Let’s look at the verses:

²⁰ Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said:
“ Blessed are you poor,
For yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹Blessed are you who hunger now,
For you shall be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
For you shall laugh.
²² Blessed are you when men hate you,
And when they exclude you,
And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,
For the Son of Man’s sake.
²³ Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!
For indeed your reward is great in heaven,
For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

²⁴ “ But woe to you who are rich,
For you have received your consolation.
²⁵ Woe to you who are full,
For you shall hunger.
Woe to you who laugh now,
For you shall mourn and weep.
²⁶ Woe to youwhen allmen speak well of you,
For so did their fathers to the false prophets.

What instantly strikes me in the passage is how in either case of those who are in the kingdom (those who trust in Christ) and those who are outside of the kingdom (those who do not trust in Christ), there are virtually the same kinds of desires-

1) The desire to have poverty filled with riches

2) The desire to have hunger filled with nourishment

3) The desire to have sorrow filled with joy

4) The desire to have our rejection filled with approval

These are things that both the believer and unbeliever like to have.  Jesus’ main point in this passage isn’t to say that these desires are wrong, but rather to bring out the reality of WHERE these desires are filled in.

Poverty, hunger, sorrow, and rejection don’t sound compelling, and by no means is Christ telling us that we have to fit these descriptions to be Christians, so the question is this: As a Christian, where should I ultimately be looking towards to fill these forms of deficit?

The answer is simply “Christ”.  If my poverty is filled with the riches of Christ, it is a richness that never fades away, unlike the unbeliever.  I may have money, but when I lose it all, I am still rich because my riches were never in my possessions, but in Christ.  If my hunger is filled with Christ, the bread of life (the Israelites feasted off manna from heaven, which Christ said is Himself), then even if my stomach rumbles and I don’t have bread, I have my fill in Christ and my hunger for Him, my hunger to do the will of the Father consumes me more than hunger for food does.  In my sorrow, if I find my joy in Christ, then despite what things cause injury to me or to my life, my joy was never in the temporary pleasures that can be experienced on this earth, but in the everlasting joy of Christ.  And if my desire for approval is found in Christ, despite rejection of men, I know that on the basis of the righteousness of Christ, I will be approved, and my efforts for Christ will be found approved by God even though an unbelieving world has rejected me.

Where do we find our fill?

Psalm 37:25

I have been young, and now am old;
Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,
Nor his descendants begging bread.

The Scripture is still true.  Though we may face hunger, with our fill in Christ, we, the righteous, will truly never beg bread or go hungry because the true bread of life-Christ-supplies us with a fill of Himself that can never be added to.  Let us set our hope on this fill of bread!