‘I Am Thirsty’
Like Jesus, we thirst for God’s healing, restoring presence in our own pain-wracked lives. Our souls are parched and dry for it. God willingly quenches it – abundantly, fully, now and forever.
When was the last time you were really thirsty?
Can you remember a time you were dying for a sip of something wet?
Do you know what it means to be thirsty?
Really?
What was Jesus thirsting for?
Certainly for something simply to wet his parched lips, his gritty mouth, his dry throat. That’s obvious. After the agony He has been enduring for hours now, Jesus is suffering bitter dehydration and blistering thirst. Just, please, something wet – and yet this thirst seems such a minor thing in light of the fact that His whole wounded, lashed, pain-wracked body hangs heavily on the cross.
In the agony of His thirst, there is a jar full … a sponge full … of sour wine. That is wine gone bad. It is vinegar. Can you smell it? Can you taste it? The sharp scent and bracing taste must have stung Jesus, but the wetness offers just a moment of relief, bitter though it may be.
Jesus said, “I am thirsty,” He said this in order to fulfil scripture.
There is no doubt that Jesus was experiencing the absolute worst physical pain imaginable. God knows the enormity of human pain – even the pain we experience in illness, woundedness and heartbreak, because God became human flesh and felt that pain deeply on the cross.
And in the midst of that deep, desperate pain, Jesus expresses a simple reality: I am thirsty. He begs for something to soothe His dry mouth and loosen His tongue.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
(Psalm 42:1-2)
Jesus, at the end of his human life, yearns with every beaten, bloody fibre of His being to behold again the face of God. So, on the cross, Jesus thirsts. He thirsts in a physical sense, surely, but just as surely in a spiritual sense.
As we come in this season of penitence and reflection, what are you thirsting for? Are you thirsty for God? Does your dry, dusty spirit yearn for refreshment from God’s hand?
Sometimes we get so distracted and exhausted by life that we don’t even realize how thirsty we are. Spiritually, we often do something similar. We become so involved in the minute details of daily living that we don’t realize how parched our soul really is – until the Spirit grabs hold of us in some surprising way and offers the cleansing, cooling, renewing draft of the holy water of God’s presence.
We remember Christ’s life and His death with the wine of the Eucharist, His blood, shed on the cross, remembering Him, honouring His deep, full, sacrificial love for us every time we drink it. This is the wine of love.
We thirst for that wine, that love. Like Jesus, we thirst for God’s healing, restoring presence in our own pain-wracked lives. Our souls are parched and dry for it. God willingly quenches it – abundantly, fully, now and forever.
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, You keep Your promise to us and open the fountain of living water and grant us faith to drink, to come to the cross. For some of us, we come to the cross for the very first time. Some of us, we’re coming back to the familiar, back to the cross. And there before the One who said, “I thirst,” nourish us, quench our thirst, answer our hunger, and feed us with Yourself. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Eric Smith