Only when we are consumed with desperate longing for righteousness will we be happy!
A young man asked his pastor how to be happy. The pastor said, “Come with me. I’ll show you how to find happiness.” They walked to the river, where the young man assumed he would probably get baptized.
When they were chest deep in the river, the pastor suddenly grabbed the young man’s head and forced under the water. The young man thrashed about violently, convinced he was going to drown. At last he managed to get his head above water and gasp for air.
The pastor looked him in the eye and said, “Young man, when you hunger and thirst after righteousness as desperately as you craved air just now—then happiness will be yours.”
It is a biological fact that every living thing hungers and thirsts. I have five healthy children who are the joy of my life. When I brought them home from the hospital, they came through the door hungry and thirsty. Any of them would—and at one time or another all of them did—wake me up without hesitation at all hours of the night to demand food. They didn’t care that I’d just gone to bed after an emergency pastoral call. They didn’t care that they’d singlehandedly destroyed my sleep five nights in a row. They just knew they were hungry and they wanted food now.
To tell you the truth, those midnight cries were music to my ears. It meant the kids were healthy and growing. I knew as I stumbled down the dark hallway with another bottle that those cries were evidence of vibrant life.
Only the dead and the dying are without appetite. They want no food. They crave no water. When we feel bad and go to the doctor, the first question he asks us is, “How’s your appetite?” Loss of appetite is nature’s way of telling us we’re sick.
Jesus was asking His audience by the Sea of Galilee—And our hedonistic generation as well—“How’s your appetite for right living?”
Source: Being Happy in an Unhappy World
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