An Invitation to the Thirsty

Over the course of the summer, I learned what it's like to be thirsty. More importantly, I learned what wrath could ensue from an intense thirst- that is, the wrath of 20 sprinting third graders in the sweltering heat when you are the only thing between them and an orange water cooler. I was usually able to stop the mob of crazy kids from attacking the precious agua, but I have bruises to prove that it was a well-fought battle. Those kids were thirsty.

Although water is the choice for hot summer days, there are other things we crave just as much. I love the way the Bible describes our thirst for God in Psalm 42:1:

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God."

I think it's funny that we can pant for God... and yet it totally makes sense to me. When we have been lacking in discipline and time with God, we begin to feel it. It's an aching and longing sense that something is not right, and we do everything in our power to get back to a place of communion with Him. Kind of like sprinting towards a water cooler, right?

I have found that I feel the farthest away from God in times of impatience and weariness. I am still trying to figure out if this is a correlation to the events going on in my life at the moment, or if it is just because I have been lazily ignoring Him, but nevertheless I have seen this to be a pattern. My soul feels merely existent, rather than alive and excited. This problem has been around for generations: Isaiah 55 pleads for us to come to God, "that your soul may live!" I think that our lack of desire to pant for God exists when we are not believing in what He can do with our lives. Here's a snapshot of what God says through Isaiah about thirsting for trust and faith in Him:

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.'" (vs. 8-11)

When we trust that God's word will not return void to us, that He knows exactly what is going on and what He's doing, we can pant for more of Him and sprint wholeheartedly towards a deeper relationship with the one who can lighten up our souls! And, like those thirsty third graders, we can make a scene as we sprint towards the One thing our souls truly crave and need... and people will notice what means the most to us.