I Thirst

(This blog post is from March 7th, however, I was on a retreat with a Confirmation Class of 14 teens and no internet.Please don't think I didn't write God a love letter.  The whold experience was a love letter from Him!))

Blessed Lord,

As a newborn baby, you cried out to your mother, and she put you to her breast and gave you her milk.  Your little newborn cries spoke some of the first words that would also become some of your last words, "I thirst."

The truth is, you have been thirsting since time began.  You had the perfect lifegiving flow of love with your people in Eden, until they chose something else.  They withheld the flow of love that you have thirsted for ever since.

Your mother sensed that thirst at the wedding feast of Cana, when she pointed out that they were out of wine.  She saw how those guests were affected by their thirst for celebration, and she knew the thirst within you for their love.  She knew your mission, and felt the beginning rumblings of the labor pains that you would soon endure, in giving us new birth.

You shared the cup at the last supper with your friends.  You thirsted for the blood of the covenant that ushered in a new flow of love that would be shared with humanity once and for always! "Do this in memory of me!" I will remember you giving the cup that quenches all thirst.  The cup that gives living water.  The cup that contains you.

Then, on the cross.  After the bleeding and sweating had robbed you of most of the moisture within your human body, again you cry out, "I thirst".  No wonder.  You were abandoned and drained, and about to be separated from all you had known in this life.  I was not there for you when you thirsted for me.

Has anything I've done in my whole life offered you one bit of comfort from your thirst?  Have I given you one drop of cool refreshing water for your tongue, when it was parched and dry and stuck to the roof of your mouth?  What can I do to bring you relief from a thirst so vast?

I thirst for you, too.  I will share your love as if it were the refreshing cool water that gives life in a drought.  I will seek out your thirsting self and offer cool drink.  I will share the flow of your love that I thirst for, as if it were never-ending, in hopes that it would comfort you, if for even one moment.

Help me to see you thirst, and quench it.

Love,

Me