I have a problem.  I am addicted to my BlackBerry, sometimes at the peril of a harmonious marriage, but also jealous of my iPhone friends who do things with their screen I can only contemplate.  Today's Wall Street Journal now tells us that the BlackBerry "Thunder" will soon solve all my problems.  My life will then be complete.

What do you want today?  What defines success for you?  If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?  What should you be?  Let's ask Jesus.

"Blessed are the ones hungering and thirsting," the fourth Beatitude begins in the literal Greek (Matthew 5:6).  Our Lord assumes that we all hunger and thirst for something.  In his day people knew physical hunger and thirst every day.  People died without food or water.  Droughts weren't a nuisance for the lawn but a threat to life itself.  Crop failures didn't mean debt but death.  While our society is past that place, we're no less hungry and thirsty for the things that matter to us.  We're all driven by something.

Theologian Paul Tillich claimed that we each have an "ultimate concern."  Something or someone matters more than anything else to us.  There's something in your life which means success and significance to you.  Raising successful children; becoming president of your company; retiring at 55; publishing bestselling books; getting into the right school, making the right grades, having the right friends; becoming a famous artist or doctor or lawyer or scientist or singer or teacher; being "happy."

What drives you?  What should?  How can you be sure that when you climb to the top of the ladder, it's not leaning against the wrong wall?  What constitutes success with God?  What makes us "blessed" by God?  For what should we "hunger and thirst" this morning?

Jesus tells us to "hunger and thirst after righteousness."  He has three relationships in mind: be right with God, with others, and with yourself.  Decide that you will be godly in every way today.  Then admit that you cannot be godly without God's help: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God" (Romans 3.10-11).

Now give God time to make you righteous.  Meet him in Scripture, so he can transform your mind.  Meet him in prayer, so he can transform your spirit.  Meet him in worship, so he can transform your soul.  Let the carpenter work with the wood, molding and shaping it into his own image.  Are you righteous right now?  Will you be later today?

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