Good Morning Garden

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).

Righteousness is another of the key words of the Bible, one of those keys that the reader must have in his possession if he is to get at the true meaning of the book. Like earth and meek and comfort, it is used in a special and definite sense. Righteousness means not merely right conduct, but right thinking. In the Sermon on the Mount, every clause reiterates the truth that outer things are but consequences. As within, so without.

When people awaken to a knowledge of these truths, they naturally begin to apply them in their own lives. Realizing at last the vital importance of “righteousness” they begin immediately to try to p ut their house in order. The principle involved is simple, but unfortunately the exemplifying of it is anything but easy. Now, why should this be so? The answer lies in the potency of habit; and habits of thinking are at once the most subtle and the most difficult to break.

Perhaps failure to achieve righteousness is the failure of half-heartedness; you long but not too deeply. Your hunger and thirst do not rise from a sense of total need. Have a mental stocktaking or a review of your life. It could not happen that a wholehearted search for truth and righteousness, if persevered in, should not be crowned with success. God is not mocked, nor does He mock His children.

How can we seek truth and righteousness in the outer world, when we refuse to accept it within us. Of course, we can’t. It is much easier to say what is wrong with the world than to say what is wrong with ourselves. Yet with out that internal accounting of our inner righteousness, there can be no outer peace. Our environments will reflect our inner feelings and motivations more surely than our words and deeds. When we can not live and go forward without truth and righteousness within and without, then God will fill us with it.

In hunger,
Z gardener