Those words, “hunger” and “thirst,” are descriptive of a longing for something that is so powerful it feels desperate and necessary. It is a gnawing pang, an uncomfortable awareness of a thing’s absence, that not only doesn’t go away but it actually gets worse and more intense until it is satisfied.

Sometimes when we set out to explore the meaning of a scripture like this one it is not unlike wiggling through a narrow opening into a vast cavern. As we army-crawl our way in, going deeper and deeper, the tunnel widens out until we suddenly find ourselves in a space far bigger than we had imagined when we first entered into it. That was how I felt as I began studying Matthew 5:6 this week. This one sentence uttered by Jesus is the entry point to a vast, expansive world of truths, and there are some beautiful things in there for us to enjoy together.