Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: The true wonder of human beings is not that we are sinners, but that no matter how low we sink, we are haunted by goodness. “The fallen,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “clutch the remnants of virtue to them in the brothel and on the scaffold.” The righteous among us are not blessed, because they do not exist. The blessed are those who seek it, who crave it. We seek righteousness as David sought to build the Temple; and, like David, we never succeed. But what did God say to David about it? “You did well that it was in your heart.” (1 Kings 8:18) C S Lewis courage quote In his great work Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis made this argument for evidence of God’s existence. We were born with a desire to eat, and there is food to satisfy that desire. We are born with a drive for sex and a desire to have children, and both of these can be satisfied. We want rest when we are tired, and we find sleep. We do not, in other words, have by our nature any desires which are entirely incapable of satisfaction; so what can we say about our desire to find God? Our search for something we cannot see, for something good and true and powerful that is greater than we, would not exist if there were not a God who could satisfy it. Like hunger and thirst, the desire to find God is never finally satisfied. The need is ongoing; we are filled, but then become hungry again. So we are not blessed by becoming righteous, but by seeking it, as if we were starving in a desert. And as we seek our food several times every day, so we should seek God. A short prayer makes a good breakfast. Paul in Prison Paul in Prison And there is yet another shade of meaning that does not come across very well in English. We may be hungry for peanut butter, but we will not eat all of the peanut butter there is, but only a few ounces. The righteousness in the beatitude, however, is all righteousness. We will not be satisfied with two tablespoons of righteousness; our hunger is for all righteousness, that God's goodness should rule all things at all times. We seek Christ; only by Him can we be filled. Finally, the beatitude can also be read to mean something quite different: That those people who undergo physical suffering in the cause of righteousness will be rewarded. If we go hungry in the cause of righteousness, we will be blessed for it. Few of us today suffer much discomfort from our beliefs; Christ’s burden is light. But those who have suffered terribly for Christ seem not to regret it. Roman martyrs, stereotypically thrown in an arena with lions, were said to meet their end singing hymns and raising their eyes to heaven. Their terror was balanced, and in many cases erased, by a joy that could only have come from the Holy Spirit, blessing them with a taste of heaven in the last moments of their lives. So if there are sacrifices that we believe will be too difficult and painful, we need only have faith; God will come to anyone who willingly accepts pain in the cause of righteousness, and the pain will be transformed, and the person filled.