As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Ps. 42:1-2
”My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:13
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ”If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37-38
Dear Lord Jesus, there’s no craving more demanding than thirst—no yearning more unyielding or need unbending. Thirst is neither patient nor polite. It doesn’t “take a number and wait.” Thirst will not be denied. It will be slaked, one way or another.
Because this is true, we join the psalmist in crying out: Jesus, intensify our thirst for you. Make us pant and keep us panting like the deer which pants after streams of water. Take us to the unpolluted, undistilled, never-ending brooks of your provision. Hydrate us with heavenly H20.
As Lent continues, expose the broken cisterns of our own making—those aquatic mirages to which we turn when we don’t believe you’re faithful nor enough. Don’t let us be even momentarily satisfied with any other beverage than the draft you draw, the potion you pour, the life-giving libation you alone can give.
If we take up King David’s lament, “When can I go and meet with God?” you answer back without delay, “Right now, my beloved; do not wait. If you’re thirsty, come to me and drink.” “Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38).
If we should say, “But Jesus, where can we find you?” you answer back even quicker, “Not in the law; not in your strivings; not in your labors; not in your earnestness; not in your self-loathings; not in your vain promises; but only in the gospel.”
“Come and fall into the rivers of my love. Swim in the oceans of my mercies. Stand under the cascading waterfalls of my grace. Open your heart wide to my supply, and I will fill you to overflowing with everything you need and more than you want.”
Even so and evermore, Jesus, school us well in panting after you. You thirsted in death that we might be satisfied in life. Fill us afresh that we might be a people to the praise of your glory and grace. So very Amen we pray, in your all-glorious and all-generous name.
