Thirsty

(Back to blogging after a week off due to my grandma's funeral)
This Lent I am focusing on the big idea of changing our mindset from allowing our past to give us direction into the future, and instead grabbing a hold of our future and allowing that to pull us towards Christ. When we put our faith in Christ he has already made us saints of God by his sacrifice on the cross. So we need to grab a hold of that future and be pulled towards the saint God has made us to be.
We are using Jesus' Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7 to learn about how Christ has called us to live out our sainthood. We will be connecting the Beatitudes from Matthew 5:1-12 to other passages of the Sermon on the Mount to put some flesh on what to grab a hold of in our future.
This week I want to connect Jesus' calling for us to be the "salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13) with Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." I wondered if part of Jesus' calling for us to be salt is for us to make people thirsty because if you eat a lot of salt you do get thirsty. The reason I found that we get thirsty is because our bodies need a certain balance of salt and water in our blood and cells. When we eat a lot of salt that increases the salt level in our blood, which then needs more water to get back into balance or equilibrium.
Since salt makes people thirsty, I wonder if Jesus would tell us to help people hunger and thirst for righteousness. The definition of righteousness I would use is the Hebrew idea of shalom. Shalom means peace. However this peace means more than just the absence of war or violence. This peace is about wholeness. It is about having everything as God would want it to be. It is about balance with everything in its right place. So we are called to thirst for this shalom to fill the earth.
In America, and especially in Williamsburg, it can be easy to look around and feel that we are not too far from shalom. Yet we need to become more aware of what is going on around us in the world. I went looking at some ministries that are thirsting for righteousness and found some realities that make me thirsty, and I thought they might make you thirsty also.
Looking at pictures and hearing information about the recent tsunami in Japan makes me thirsty. The lives of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, are out of shalom. Estimates are the over 18,000 people have died and the destruction is horrific. How does our thirst call us to respond? (new.gbgm-umc.org/umcor)
Another ministry is called Living Water International. They are thirsty to get clean drinking water to those who do not have access to it. They say there are 2.5 billion people who do not have clean drinking water. This is the leading cause of death in under resourced countries where 1.8 million people die each year from water born illnesses. This includes 3,900 children each day. (www.water.cc)
I also was thirsty for righteousness when I heard that there are more slaves today then ever before. There are 12.3 million people caught in human trafficking. These people are forced into slave labor and prostitution, while those who sell them make $32 billion a year. International Justice Mission is thirsty to rescue people and prosecute the offenders. (www.ijm.org)
Of course there are many other places and lives that do not know God's shalom. I believe Jesus calls us as the salt of the earth to inform people and help them get thirsty to make a difference. As we thirst together, we can offer God's shalom to others. We can do it halfway around the world, but also in our own neighborhoods if we will just thirst for righteousness and keep our eyes and hearts open to see those who have lost shalom.
This Lent I encourage you to grab onto hungering and thirsting for righteousness as a way to be drawn towards the saint Christ has called you to be.