Thirsty?

I can remember a time when I was rather confused by the presence of appetizers on restaurant menus.  Having been brought up in a dogmatic "don't eat that now, you'll ruin your appetite for supper" environment, I felt the offering of such pre-meal snacks to be inappropriate.  The things I wanted to eat before supper as a child were sugary and nutritionless - edible food-like substances, to quote Michael Pollan.  My parents' desire was that I would eat the real food, the healthy stuff that would be served up at the dinner table.  I did not always listen to my parents and would often find myself disinclined to eat the nutritious brussel sprouts staring at me from my plate.  (Perhaps the sprouts were the problem, not the snacking...bad example.)   But when I was hungry I would hoe in and, especially in my teen years, eat prodigiously.

Being hungry enhances our experience of food, as being thirsty does of drink.  When our appetite is spoiled or our thirst is sated, the good food and drink in front of us are unappreciated if not unconsumed.  

He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  To the Thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.  Revelation 21:6

I find it hard to imagine reading this text and texts like it (Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! - Isaiah 55:1) and not knowing hope and thankfulness.  This is such good news.  If you are thirsty.

A great spiritual malaise of our time and culture is that we are not thirsty.  Having blunted our thirst and appetite by edible God-like substances, we have no further desire for the real food and drink of Jesus himself.  I am aware of this myself.  I fill my time with distractions and entertainments - television and Facebook are among them.  Accumulated stuff makes the list as well.  These things take the edge off my hunger and thirst.  They fill my anxieties which are most in evidence when I am still and there is nothing to do.  I am eating sugary and nutrition less fillers and, when the real meal is before me, I am no longer hungry.

The proclamation that He fills the hungry with good things, that He satisfies the thirsty with living water is thrilling only when I am aware of my hunger and thirst for Him.  

Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast.  Joel 2:15

Lord God, make me hungry and thirsty that I may be satisfied.