Craving

Food is one of the great loves of my life.  There really isn't a time of the day when I'm not ready to eat a little snack or try something new.  Sushi = goodness in raw form.  Pizza = pure circular delight.  Chocolate = God's gift to His children.  Texas Pete = nectar of the gods.  This love of food also compels me to undertake creative attempts in the kitchen.  On any given night my family has no idea what might show up on their plates.

My love of food is usually driven by my physical need for it.  If I go too long in my day without eating something, my demeanor often reveals my need for nourishment.  But my desire to eat is often spurred by my impulse to eat, whether it's out of habit or I simply find a snack in my line of sight.  Most of you can join me in remember times when you consumed something just because you were bored or it was just sitting there waiting to be eaten.  We eat out of habit just as much as we eat out of need.

I've never truly been hungry in my life.  There are times when I have attempted to undertake partial fasts for periods of time, but I've never known what it's like to have a stomach so empty that filling it with food would almost ache as much as the hunger pains themselves.  I've seen the television commercials of starving children and I've felt the shame of knowing that I probably purchase more from the store in a couple of weeks than many people consume in an entire year.  Physical hunger is often nothing more than an appetite to satisfy a craving that is well within our own control.

Craving.  That thing that spurs us on to feed our appetite.  Sure, this craving goes well beyond just a desire for food -- it can be for companionship, popularity, status, advancement, and many more desires. Most of the cravings that we encounter in our lives are natural in their form, yet they can consume and control us if we don't get a harness on them.  It's not always bad to crave something.

God wants us to crave Him.

That's why He created us the way that He did.  In Genesis 2:7, we read how God created man out of the dust of the earth.  Everything else that God created, He did so ex nihilo - out of nothing - but not so with man, whom God created out of substance (and when He created woman He also created her from substance too, using the rib of the man).  And to top it off, God breathed His very own life into us so that not only would we possess substance like no other part of God's creation but that we would also possess the ability to related to God unlike any other part of His creation (Genesis 2:21-22).  We were created to actually KNOW God.

This brings us back to craving.  Do you crave after God?  When you consider that nothing else in the created order has the ability to hunger for God, does this make your spirit hunger for Him?  Jesus told us that we would be blessed if we hungered and thirsted after the righteousness of God (Matthew 5:6).  But for us to crave after God, we must first realize our hunger for Him.  My cravings for sushi die down if I don't think about sushi for awhile.  With your heart constantly fixed on knowing God, your craving for Him should never diminish and your appetite for more of Him will never be satisfied completely; you'll find that you want more and more of Him, a request that He delights to grant to you.