I am a Jesus pusher!!! “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). In the year 1820, a great whale rammed and sank the whaling vessel “Essex” in the South Pacific. As it sank, the captain and crew climbed into the three whaleboats. These were twenty-five foot sea going rowboats that would carry the survivors more than three thousand miles, over a period of 93 days, to the coast of South America. Those who survived the journey described the voyage as three months of constant torture. As the first mate, Owen Chase, recorded in his journal, “The privation of water is justly ranked among the most dreadful of the miseries of our life … The violence of raving thirst has no parallel in the catalogue of human calamities.” On the twenty-third day after the sinking of their ship, he wrote, “[Our] thirst had become now incessantly more intolerable than our hunger, and the quantity then allowed [half a pint per day] was barely sufficient to keep the mouth in a state of moisture, for about one third of the time … In vain was every expedient try to relieve the raging fever of the throat … Our suffering during these … days almost exceeded human belief.” [In the Heart of the Sea, p. 116]
We are faced again with another ludicrous Beatitude. Congratulations to those found on a small boat three thousand miles from shore without drinkable water. The physical condition described above, now transferred to a spiritual condition, and only highlights the deep pain contained in the inner soul of the being. How could such a condition be tolerated in the spiritual area of one’s life? It is a thirst for Jesus! I am a Jesus pusher!!!