"Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." Isaiah 55:1 (ESV)
Jesus says in Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." The blessing for those who go after the heart of God is that they will find the heart of God. The good news is that the Lord is available, and if we go after Him we'll find him and be satisfied.
The scripture repeatedly uses the images of hunger and thirst. In Psalm 42, the singer says, "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." In John 6:35, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." And in John 4 he said this to the woman at the well: "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Thirst seems to come up more than hunger, probably because we can survive longer without food than we can without water. As kids we learn that three things are required for survival: food, water, and shelter. God of course provides all three. Shelter will have to wait for another post another day. Food is essential and often tied in the scripture to water, as in the beatitude above. But I want to talk about water, about thirst, and about the River.
If you have ever been so thirsty that you could think of nothing else but the sensation of thirst, you can appreciate the notion of panting for water. When you are parched, when the sun is high and hot, the air sapped of moisture, your skin taut and with salty sweat, and all you can think of is the sweet taste of water on your tongue...when you are here in this thirst, water is everything. So it also is with our spirits. That's what the scripture says, what the Psalmist sings: just as the body pants for flowing, sweet, cold, pure and satisfying water, so I long for you Lord. Thirst is a deep natural urge, a mechanism to keep the body alive by driving it to find water. Thirst is a deep spiritual need, a mechanism to satisfy an urge of the spirit that was planted in us before birth, back-way-back when the Lord made man to commune with Him for eternity. Living in the heart of God is a satisfaction to our spirits that nothing else provides; it is the culmination of our existence as sons and daughters of God.
In the beginning, before sin, Man walked with God completely. Man inhabited the heart of God and so was completely satisfied. But since the Fall, we are thirsty for Him. Our separation from Him has parched our spirits, and so we keep looking for water. There are many rivers from which to drink; I've dipped my hands in a lot of them and come away with cotton mouth for my efforts. But there is only one river that runs with living water. "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."'" (John 7:37-8, ESV). If anyone thirsts, come to the Lamb of God and drink. And not only will you be satisfied, but in turn you will have living waters running from your own heart. Your heart will be deep like the heart of God, and like God said of David, you will be a man or woman after God's own heart.
It strikes me that Jesus cried this out. There he was in the temple, and the scripture says he cried this out. "IF ANYONE THIRSTS, LET HIM COME AND DRINK!" I wonder if that's what it was like, if Jesus was yelling at the crowd. Maybe he cried it out because it had welled up in him, because the Spirit was so strong and his compassion so deep that he could barely contain it. Here was this man who most of the crowd was still unsure of claiming that he would fulfill scripture and satisfy their thirst. Some must have thought him a lunatic. Others no doubt smacked their lips and thought suddenly of the sweet satisfaction of a deep, cool draught. Living water indeed.
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