Blessed Are the UnsatisfiedSýnishorn

The Blessing of Need

When my family was planning to move the year I turned thirteen, I was terrified at the prospect of moving to a new city. That fear drove me to get more serious about my relationship with God. I prayed and told God, “I don’t want to go anywhere without you.” I wrote a dated note in the front of my Bible, assuring myself I had made a full-scale commitment to Jesus that day. 

Less than one year later, it became apparent that my mom had suffered from schizophrenia for many years. She began to have severe psychotic episodes, repeated hospitalizations, and disabling treatments. My teenage years were like the worst kind of carnival ride—a series of downward spirals, gut-lurching twists, gnawing fear, and silent screams. I don’t know how many times I looked back at that note I wrote in my Bible, seeking assurance that despite the way I sometimes felt, I wasn’t walking alone. As with everyone else, it was hardship that kept me in touch with the fact that I needed God.

Blessings often don’t look the way we expect them to. Left to our wisdom, humans are not quick to seek blessing in curses. But praise be to God, that’s the way things work under God’s compassion. We are surprisingly blessed in our hunger and thirst. 

For now, while we still hunger and thirst, our unsatisfaction reminds us we need God and we need to be saved. People may not always find what they’re hoping for when they enter a house of worship, but often it’s the sense of missing something that brings them there. And for Christians who have been part of the church for a long time, acknowledging unsatisfaction can remind us that we still need God. 

It’s common for people to admit that when things are going well and they’re feeling great, they lose touch with their sense of need. This was human nature in ancient times as much as today. As the ancient Israelites stood on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, Moses reminded the people of Israel of this temptation. It’s in our times of pain and struggle, when we remember the abyss inside us, that we acutely feel our longing. Even those of us for whom salvation is assured still need to be saved. We can’t accomplish this for ourselves, and living unsatisfied can help us remember.

Adapted from Blessed Are the Unsatisfied by Amy Simpson. https://www.ivpress.com/blessed-are-the-unsatisfied