Daily Devotionals

Do We Thirst? 

Posted in Salvation

Scripture: “A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ …The Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that You, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ …Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’ The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, You have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do You get that living water?…’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’” – John 4:7-15

Actual, life-threatening thirst is a far different thing than “being thirsty.” It’s a horrible thought. A rather familiar, inconvenient occurrence becoming an agonizing, painful, debilitating life/death emergency.

When was the thirstiest you’ve ever been? If there’s no specific occasion you immediately recall, it is likely you have never been in a situation that was even close to deathly dangerous for lack of water. Oh, we’ve all sworn often, “I’m dying of thirst!” But it probably was far from true. We were just thirsty. For most of us and in most situations, the solution was/is relatively near – an available drink of water.

The Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus at Jacob’s well might provide an appropriate insight into how closely tied our thirsts for water and for life itself are. When our bodies are not hydrated well enough, our thirst pants for water. When our souls have become parched and drained of any meaningful zest for life, what do we do?

The world suggests and provides a veritable smorgasbord of attractions and distractions to divert our attention from that barren, dry emptiness. The libations we use in an attempt to quench our physical thirsts are quick-fix solutions to alleviate a present discomfort. Those “drinks” are not water to satisfy our souls. They do not and cannot quench the most basic thirst in our lives.

Jesus became for us the living water, the only water, that satisfies our thirst for real life. The living water available to us in Christ Jesus satisfies our life-thirst “once-and-for-all.”

It seems ironic that from the crucifixion cross among Jesus’ last words was the simple statement: “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). In the midst of enduring the agony of imminent cruel death to fulfill his Living Water promise of eternal life to us, he thirsted as we all do. In these words, and instances of their use, it is almost impossible to miss the connection in the analogy. Water is essential to life, temporal and eternal. Jesus did not escape or avoid any experience or calamity associated with human life and death. He sustained and overcame both and all, for our sake.

How thirsty are we, really?

Prayer: Lord of All, Thank You for the assurance of eternal life that we are offered in Christ Jesus. AMEN. 

Submitted by Bobby Fuller