Bread Crumbs – Devotions for Life

“He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground.”  
Psalm 107:33

“The burning sand shall become a pool,
the thirsty ground springs of water.”  
Isaiah 35:7

Water and thirst are powerful images repeatedly set in contrast in the Bible.

God is the source of all water.  He can give it, as He did on the second day of creation, and He can take it away, as David affirms in Psalm 107.

We have no control over when it will rain and nourish the earth and when drought inhabits the land.  This is a reality for Christians and atheists.  Rain is out of our control.

Thirst is a physical and spiritual reality in our lives.  Physical dehydration will zap the body of strength and is frequently the cause of headaches, illness, and death.  Without water you will die.

Thirst is also a spiritual need.  This is why God invites us to come to Him to relive our thirst.  In Isaiah 55:1 God invites us to come to Him with this invitation:
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”

When Jesus met the woman at the well, He knew her thirst was deeper than her dry mouth and throat.  She was faint because her soul was dying for more, yet all she knew to do was to draw from an earthen well.

Jesus said to her in John 4:13-14

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I grew up in Florida in a home which was not air conditioned.  At an early age, I learned the necessity and the ability to drink copious amounts of water everyday.  I still regularly drink a gallon of water everyday.

My wife is amazed at my ability to drink so much water and, if necessary, to drink 24 ounces in less than a minute.  

When I am physically faint and thirsty, I know what to do.

I know many Christians who are always spiritually thirsty.  

They only take in God in tiny sips, an ounce here and there.  They are never spiritually satisfied because they have never learned to take in God in large gulps.

Are you thirsty?