Hungering and Thirsting: "the passion for God himself"

"To hunger and thirst after a thing means the recognition that without that thing there can be no life. It involves that in this one desire and its satisfaction the whole meaning of life is centered, that the whole energy of life is directed towards it, that the goal of life is identified with it. To the sense of this fundamental spiritual crav­ing all other things are obliterated. As to the hungry and thirsty gold and silver become worthless, so to the disci­ple in whom this desire has awakened, the wealth of the universe, were he offered it, would have no attraction.

"…this intensified desire has for its object the righteousness of God...What renders this thing desirable is the vision of it as associated with God. In its ultimate analysis it is the passion for God himself. Here is the cry of the psalmist: ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee,’ translated into terms of ethics. Still further, the form of hunger and thirst which the desire assumes presupposes the clearest conceivable perception of the nature of its object. As there is no more vivid picture of the nourish­ing and refreshing power of food and drink than that which stands before the imagination of a hungry and thirsty person, so there is no truer, no more adequate reproduction of God’s own idea of righteousness than that which exists in the mind that hungers and thirsts after the manner here portrayed. Herein lies one of the chief glories of the work of redemption, that it produces in the heart and mind of the sinner such a profound, ineffaceable impression of the realities in God. Nothing will lay so bare the foundations of our relationship to him as the experience of salvation." -- Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, p. 36-37