Quench Your Thirst.
Thirst is usually a term reserved for the need for water. Our bodies are made up of a 50-60% water, if the internet is correct. The need for water is very clear. Many of us simply sense the requisite desire to imbibe water. We may be met with a dry mouth or the need to take a drink of water after a difficult workout. If we sweat a lot during a hot summer’s day at the beach, some form of liquid is very necessary.
Water enables your body to maintain a normal temperature. Water works into your bodily system to lubricate and cushion joints. H20 is present to protect your spinal cord as well as other sensitive tissues. The presence of water in your body enables you to clean out your system. The need for water is vital.
Jesus uses the metaphor of thirst in order to show a huge crowd their need. He is not talking about physical thirst for water. He is talking about a spiritual thirst that manifests itself in cravings of the human psyche or in the form of intense desires for wealth, for relationships, for that elusive high. Thirst is embedded in the soul of each and every human being on this planet. And Jesus makes a very bold statement by claiming that He can quench the thirst inside of you and I.
“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified’” (John 7:37-39).
Jesus had explored this concept of thirst with the woman at the well in John 4. Her thirst came out in a pursuit of crippling relationships with various men. She was raggedly addressing this thirst with one man after another. But the thirst did not subside.
In a brisk move of divine judgment, Jesus talked with this woman (a culturally abrasive event) and shared with her an astounding theological truth: He was the Messiah that she was longing for.
What is your thirst? Jesus can quench it. Are you run ragged and parched by a pursuit of pleasure or comfort, security or nurturing? No earthly avocation will satisfy. Only the divine Son of God can fill that void.
Blaise Pascal, in the latter half of the 17th century, penned this, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” (Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)).
He expounds on that concept of thirst and explains how we each seek a way to fill that void. But it is only the infinite and divine Son of God who can truly fill the void. So let’s drink deep of the water that Jesus provides! May the Spirit of the Living God quench our thirst.
Peace to you, in Christ Jesus!