Hunger Satisfied and Bread Shared

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled…” - words spoken by the Bread of Life (Matt. 5:6)

What does that word “righteousness” mean to you? The Greek word offers us room to explore and ponder - δικαιοσύνην (dikaiosynēn), connoting both justice in the world and connection with God and God’s whole and whole-making way of being. Relationships with God, self, others and nature set right, even in their beautiful complexity. Perhaps another word for this might be harmony, or the Hebrew Testament’s concept of shalom.

On Sunday, our preacher the Rev. Larry Dove asked us what we’re hungry for these days and how we’re looking to meet that hunger - how God might be looking to meet us in it. You’re invited to talk these things over with God in your own spirit as you read the poem below.

A Blessing Called Sanctuary (by Jan Richardson)

You hardly knew
how hungry you were to be gathered in,
to receive the welcome that invited you to enter entirely—
nothing of you found foreign or strange,
nothing of your life that you were asked
to leave behind or to carry in silence or in shame.

Tentative steps became settling in,
leaning into the blessing
that enfolded you, taking your place in the circle that stunned you
with its unimagined grace.

You began to breathe again,
to move without fear, to speak with abandon
the words you carried in your bones, that echoed in your being.

You learned to sing.
But the deal with this blessing is that it will not leave you alone,
will not let you linger in safety, in stasis.

The time will come when this blessing
will ask you to leave,
not because it has tired of you
but because it desires for you to become the sanctuary that you have found—
to speak your word into the world, to tell what you have heard with your own ears, seen with your own eyes, known in your own heart:
that you are beloved, precious child of God, beautiful to behold,
and you are welcome and more than welcome here.