Liturgy 094: Hunger
Beauty Blessing Happiness V
Lectio Divina
Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be filled.
Jesus
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Mary Oliver
Prayer
God of the Wilderness Table
where manna falls,
only for the empty
We confess:
we are full.
Full of convenience
full of ambition
full of curated pleasures
and distracted longings.
We have been trained
to crave sugar instead of substance,
speed instead of wisdom,
results instead of goodness.
But you have placed
eternity within
our finite clay jars
And she cries out,
not for more,
but for what is true.
So retrain our eyes.
Rewire our appetites.
Let us thirst again
for what cannot be bought…
for integrity,
for justice,
for the kind of goodness
that costs us something.
Let us hunger deeply
to see your image
painted across
our inner lives.
Make us blessed.
Make us hungry.
Blessing
Dear Friend
Go now,
not with the burden of self-improvement
but with the courage to crave
something more beautiful.
Stay empty enough to be filled.
Stay hungry enough to be human.
Stay open to the slow miracle
of becoming righteous.
You are blessed,
not because you have arrived,
but because you long.
In the Name of the One
Who found strength in the Wilderness
Amen