November 21 Daily Devotional

Bartimaeus put himself in the way ...

... unless we day by day voluntarily and deliberately remind ourselves of this righteousness which we need, we are not very likely to be hungering and thirsting after it. The man who truly hungers and thirsts after it makes himself look at it every day. ‘But’, you say, ‘I am so tremendously busy. Look at my agenda. Where have I time?’ I say, if you are hungering and thirsting after righteousness you will find time. You will order your life, you will say, ‘First things must come first....’ ‘Where there is a will there is a way.’ It is amazing how we find time to do the things we want to....

The man who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness always puts himself in the way of getting it. You cannot create it yourself.... But at any rate you do know there are certain ways in which it seems to have come to [the heroes of the Faith] so you begin to imitate their example. You remember that blind man, Bartimaeus. He could not heal himself.... But he went and put himself in the way of getting [his sight.]... And the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is the man who never misses an opportunity of being in those certain places where people seem to find this righteousness. Take, for example, the house of God.... I meet people who talk to me about their spiritual problems... they so want to be Christian, they say. But somehow or other something is lacking. Quite frequently I find that they do not often go to the house of God, or that they are very haphazard in their attendance. They do not know what it is to hunger and thirst after righteousness. The man who really wants it says, ‘I cannot afford to lose any opportunity; wherever this is being talked about I want to be there’ ... And then, of course, he seeks the society of people who have this righteousness. He says, ‘The oftener I am in the presence of godly and saintly men the better it is for me.... I do not want to spend so much time with others who do me no good. But these people ... I am going to keep close to them.’

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 90–1