A few weeks ago, on a hot summer morning, I went outside to water my flower garden. Watering in the late evening is best, I know, but I love a morning walk to start my day. I check to see if there are new blooms. I’ve learned that starting your day with a thing of beauty is such a blessing. All the beautiful colors help awaken my senses.
In the morning, it’s as if creation is clapping with applause as the birds are chirping, and the squirrels are scurrying up the tree, while our neighbor’s fat calico cat is basking in the sun. Feeling a soft, cool breeze refreshes and delights me, as the chimes begin playing heavenly music that will still your heart. It helps me understand more and more the scripture that states, “His mercies are new every morning.”
On that particular morning, as I began watering, I noticed with every step I took that there was a weed, after weed, after weed! So I laid down the hose and started weeding out the garden. With all the summer rains, it’s been very hard keeping it clean. I worked hard, bending over, pulling every hateful blade I saw.
All of a sudden, I felt heat rise from my toes to my head; my face felt like it was on fire, and then I felt faint. I threw my rake down and started walking as fast as I could toward the house. Thankfully, I didn’t collapse. It felt as if I was pretty close to heatstroke, and it really scared me.
What I didn’t realize was that I had been in temperatures of 90+ degrees for 3 hours and had not drunk any water. I was so busy on the task at hand that I didn’t think about being thirsty. I had been so caught up in making my garden clean and pretty, which I thought was so imperative, that I had neglected my scorched body of thirst, which could have really been so dangerous to my health.
Later, as I sat in my cool, air-conditioned home, slowly drinking water to revive myself, I began to think about how careless I had been by not paying attention to my physical needs, because I thought what I was doing was so important. My body was so thirsty that it needed to be watered much more than the flowers that day, but I kept filling the wrong well.
Don’t we do this spiritually to our thirsty soul? So often in life, it seems we experience a deep thirst for more, yet we often don’t even comprehend what ‘more’ truly means. We may try another job, a new car, a new house, even another spouse, thinking this will fill the void deep within us. I’m reminded of a woman who met Jesus at a well, and He told her that “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him will never thirst again, the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. She said Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not.” John 4.
Springing up refers to something that suddenly is, the start of something new.
When we believe in Jesus for the saving of our souls, there is suddenly within us something that suddenly is, which is the gift of His Holy Spirit. It is the start of something new, the new covenant, which is Jesus Christ. Emmanuel, He is God with us. We have been given access to life abundantly: “whosoever that is athirst come unto me.”
In the book of Ecclesiastes, it states that “God has placed eternity in our hearts.” Eternity is the thirst we are longing for, but haven’t fully experienced it yet. It’s a thirst for the spiritual world. If we’re born again, we are a spiritual being living in a physical body, which causes us to be restless in this world. There remains a thirst for more, because we only have the earnest for what lies ahead. When full revealing transpires from corruptible to incorruptible, no more hidden secrets, no more shadows, no more seeing through a glass darkly; when the pure radiant light of Jesus shines on us in all His glory, we won’t be thirsty anymore.
Until then, the spirit groans to be satisfied, and we try to fill it with whatever worldly capacity we find, but still remain thirsty till Jesus himself fills our cup at the great feast. We think the void or thirst sometimes lies in the past of a certain time, a place, or a person that will recapture what we are longing for, but it still is not enough. We sometimes think it’s our past, but it’s our future. We think it’s a place here, but it’s heaven we long for; we think it’s a person, but it’s our Lord Jesus that we long to see!
My prayer today:
“He that is athirst, let them come unto me.”
Diane Mann
Lean into Jesus Ministries
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