Water, Water Everywhere but Still Thirsty!

For reasons now lost to me, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel T. Coleridge was required reading when I was in school. It is a hauntingly weird poem about an old mariner and his crew who are becalmed, parched, and dying while surrounded by sea water. They bemoan: “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.”

This beautiful sphere’s surface with its huge oceans, major rivers, and innumerable lakes is 71percent water, and the human body is approximately 61percent water. In spite of those amazing statistics, water essential for maintaining human life is not always available. Arid lands exist with insufficient drinking water to support their populations, and weather patterns produce periodic droughts that are deadly. Furthermore, water is often contaminated and unsafe to drink.

Even if living where there is an adequate water supply, we can still have a different but fatal, unquenched thirst. We need to be valued, loved, and accepted. Without those we suffer some degree of emotional and spiritual death. So, we struggle to satisfy this thirst through relationships, professional and intellectual endeavors, talents, material things, substances, and certain behaviors. But there is a nagging emptiness; any relief we may experience is unsustained.

The Psalmist expressed this human need in a beautiful song: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). Christ addressed a solution for this soul-craving by claiming to be the source of “living water.” He said that drinking well water would only temporarily quench thirst, but whoever drinks the water that he gives will never be thirsty but have eternal life. (John 4: 10-14)

By believing in Christ’s sacrificial, redemptive act on our behalf, we are promised an unending supply of living water to meet the needs and nurture the life we are meant to possess: forgiveness for moral failures, redemption with no condemnation, restoration to God and rest for our weary souls, the presence and empowering of his Spirit, comfort within trials, peace beyond understanding, security in God’s saving power, and eternal life.

Furthermore, Jesus said, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink!” (John 7:37-38) “Anyone” is everyone; his is an all inclusive offer for redemption and restoration to God, who is the One who satisfies the deep longings of the soul. Saint Augustine understood this to be the case when he prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”(Confessions).