"YO GIRL! You thirsty?!" How many times have we heard this? Or said this...
Maybe you awkwardly yelled it as a joke to embarrass your friend who was drooling over that cute boy who sat across you in your chem class. Or maybe someone said it to you when you were clearly flirting just a little too hard with your crush in the caf. Or maybe you have just heard the phrase from social media.
No matter when or where you heard the phrase, I know you know what it means...but just in case, let me clarify: Urban Dictionary defines being thirsty as "being eager to get something."
That seems to depict how so many of us live. We are eager. But we are eager, or thirsty, for the wrong things. People today are thirsty for likes on Instagram, followers on Twitter, Pokemon Go characters, money, attention from that guy you have been eyeing for weeks, friends, popularity or affirmation.
All of these things will quench your thirst. Yes. They will. But only temporarily. These things, these worldly things will wet your lips, but only to keep you begging for more. Your thirst will never be fully quenched.
Do you want that? I sure don't. I have tried to use worldly things to quench my thirst, but it is like drinking a soda. It taste good at first, but honestly makes me want to drink more and more soda. I am never truly satisfied (and honestly there are too many calories in a soda to drink them as often as I need to to have my "thirst" actually quenched.)
So what will actually satisfy my desires? What will quench my thirst? Jesus. Yes, the typical Sunday School answer. But it is so true.
Let's keep going with the beverage analogy. Jesus is like an ice-cold bottomless bottle of water. Just picture it. You're sweating, dying for a gulp of cold, fresh water and someone comes up to you and hands you a bottle of water that never runs out. That is what Jesus wants to do for you.
Jesus uses his own analogy of how he can quench our thirsts in John as he talks to a woman at the well. John 4:13-14 reads:
Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life.”
Jesus knows this woman is drinking "sodas" rather than his "living water." So she, just like many of us, is eagerly looking for affirmation and life from worldly things such as men, friends, money, social status, etc.
Jesus also knows if we just stop eagerly drinking from the world, and drink from him, we will never thirst again. We will never be so eager to be accepted, so eager to have that boy like us, so eager to make the team, so eager to sit with the popular kids, so eager to be loved.
He doesn't want us to be thirsty. He wants to quench that thirst.
So next time you can pick between those worldly "drinks" and Jesus, the Living Water, which will you pick? I'm going with the Living Water.
I am tired of being thirsty. Are you?
