I’m Thirsty
"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It
does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is
not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrong doing. It does not delight in
evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, trusts, hopes,
perseveres." (1 Cor. 13:4-6)
Moms, I have a question: Why do you love your newborn? Silly
question, I know, but indulge me. Why do you, because I don’t get it. Maybe
it’s because I’m a guy, but for months this baby has given you pain, made you
break out in pimples and waddle like a duck. Because of this child, you craved
sardines and crackers and threw up in the morning. He punched you in the
stomach; she occupied space that wasn’t hers, and ate food she didn’t fix. You
kept him warm. You kept her safe; you kept him fed. But did she say thank you?
No.
She’s no more out of the womb than she starts to cry. The
room’s too cold; the blanket’s too rough; the nurse is too mean. And who does she
want? Mom. I mean, he didn’t even tell you he was coming. He just came. And
what a coming. The baby made you a barbarian. You screamed; you swore; you bit
bullets and tore the sheets. And now look at you. Your back aches; your head
pounds; your body’s drenched in sweat; every muscle strained and stretched. You
should be angry. But you’re not. On your face is a for-longer-than-forever
love. She’s done nothing for you, yet all you can talk about are her good looks
and bright future. He’s going to wake you up every night for the next six
weeks, but that doesn’t matter because you’re crazy about him. Why?
God, I have a question: Why do you love your children? I
don’t want to sound irreverent, but only heaven knows how much pain we’ve
brought you. Why do you tolerate us? You give us the breath we breathe, but we seldom
thank you. You give us bodies beyond compare, but do we praise you? Seldom. We
complain about the weather, and bicker about our toys. Not a second passes when
someone, somewhere doesn’t use your name to curse a hammered thumb, or a bad
call by the umpire. You fill the world with food, but we blame you for hunger.
You keep the earth from tilting, and the Arctics’ from thawing, but we accuse
you of unconcern. You give blue skies, and we demand rain. You give rain, and
we demand sun. Frankly, we give more applause to an athlete, or an actor, or a singer
than we do the God who made us.
We sing more songs to the moon than to the Christ who saved
us. We’re a gnat on the tail of one elephant in a galaxy of Africa’s and yet we
demand that you find us a parking place when we ask. And if you don’t give us
what we want, we say you don’t exist. We pollute the world you loan us. We
ignore the Word you sent us. And we killed the Son you became. We’re spoiled
babies who take and kick and pout and blaspheme. You have every reason to
abandon us. In fact, I’d wash my hands of the whole mess and start over on
Mars.
But I see your answer in the rising sun. I hear the answer
in the crashing waves. I feel the answer in the skin of a child. Father, your
love never ceases. Though we spurn and ignore and disobey you, you do not
change. Our evil can’t diminish your love, and our goodness can’t increase it.
Our faith doesn’t earn it anymore than our stupidity jeopardizes it. You don’t
love me less if I fail, and you don’t love me more if I succeed. Your love
never ceases. How do we explain it? The answer’s found, I believe, in the eyes
of a mother.
Why does mom love her newborn, anyway? Is it because the
baby’s hers? Yes, it’s that but more. It’s because the baby is her – her blood;
her flesh; her bone; her hope; her legacy. It doesn’t bother her that the baby
gives nothing. She knows a newborn is helpless and weak. She knows babies don’t
ask to come into this world, and God knows we didn’t either. We’re his idea. We
are his. His face; his eyes; his hands; his touch.
Look deeply into the face of every human being on earth and
you’ll see his likeness. Though some appear to be distant relatives, they’re
not. God has no cousins, only children. We are, incredibly, the body of Christ.
And though we may not act like our Father, there is no greater truth than this:
We are his. Unalterably. He loves us. Undyingly. There’s nothing that can
separate us from the love of Christ. (Rom. 8:38, 39) And had God not said those
words, I would be a fool to write them. But since he did, I’d be a fool not to
believe them. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. But oh how
difficult it is to embrace and accept that truth because we think we’ve committed
an act which places us outside his love. A treason; a betrayal; an aborted
promise.
We think he’d love us more if we hadn’t done it. We think
he’d love us more if we did more. We think if we were better his love would be
deeper. But we’d be wrong since God’s love is not human. His love is not
normal. His love sees our sin and loves us anyway. Does he approve of our sin?
No. Do we need to repent? Yes. But do we repent for his sake or ours? Ours,
because his ego needs no apology. His love needs no reassurance. And he could
not love us more than he does right now. Here’s a story that may help.
A mother and her daughter were entombed in eternal night.
Their only food, a jar of blackberry jam, was gone. Tons of smashed concrete
lay around them becoming their prison. "Mommy, I'm so thirsty. I want to
drink," cried the 4-year-old little girl. Susanna Petrosyan, the little
girl’s mother, was trapped in the wreckage and lay flat on her back. A
prefabricated concrete panel lay only 18 inches above her head; a crumpled
water pipe was directly above her shoulders – both of which kept her from
standing. She wore only a slip and it was bitterly cold. Susanna shivered in
the darkness – it was December. Beside her lay the lifeless body of her
sister-in-law, Karine. She had been crushed by an avalanche of concrete, and
died pinned beneath the rubble only one day after the massive earthquake had
leveled much of Leninakan and other towns and villages in northwest Armenia.
Earlier that day, Susanna and her young daughter, Gayaney,
had been driven by Susanna’s husband, Gerkham, a shoemaker, to the apartment
building on Kamo Street in Leninakan where Gerkham’s sister, Karine, lived.
After dropping off his wife and daughter, Gerkham went on to work, completely
unaware of what would become of his family in the next few minutes.
Mrs. Petrosyan, a petite woman with thick black hair and
curving eyebrows, wanted to try on a particular black dress with puffed
shoulders that Karine had for sale. Susanna wanted the evening to be just
right, since it wasn’t often that she and her husband could go out on a date
night on a shoemaker’s salary. The dress fit her perfectly, and Susanna was
happy to pay Karine the discounted family price for such a beautiful dress.
Then suddenly, at 11:41 a.m., as she was readying to leave her sister-in-law’s
apartment, the fifth-floor apartment began to tremble, and then shake
violently. Dressed only in a slip and her underwear, she grabbed Gayaney – who
was wearing a heavy winter sweater – and they sprinted for the door. And that’s
when the floor opened up and the 36-unit apartment building collapsed. The
three women, Susanna, Gayaney and Karine, fell into the basement as the
nine-story building crumbled around them.
"Mommy, I need to drink," sobbed Gayaney.
"Please give me something." Although trapped on her back, Susanna
managed to find a 1½ lb. jar of blackberry jam that had fallen into the
basement, apparently from Karine's pantry. On the second day of their
entombment – the day when Karine had died of her injuries – she gave the entire
jar of blackberry jam to Gayaney to eat. Susanna also found a dress, perhaps
the one she had tried on (it was too dark to tell), and made a bed for Gayaney
upon which to rest. And despite the bitter cold, Susanna took off her stockings
and wrapped them around her daughter to keep her warm. “I may die,” Susanna
thought, “but I want my daughter to live.”
But as the days passed, Gayaney's pleas for something to
drink became more pressing. Susanna began entertaining thoughts that her child
might die of thirst if they weren’t rescued soon. And that’s when it happened.
Susanna remembered something she had seen on television. It was a program she
had watched some time ago about an explorer in the Arctic who was dying of
thirst. To save him, his comrade had slashed open his hand and given his friend
his blood. “I’m thirsty; I want to be in my own bed; I want to see Daddy,”
Gayaney sobbed. Out of water; out of fruit juice; out of any kind of liquid; out
of hope. The only thing available was Susanna’s blood.
Even though she was trapped in darkness, Susanna could slide
on her back from side to side. Eventually, her groping, outstretched fingers,
numb from the cold, found a piece of shattered glass. And then she did it. She
sliced open her left index finger with the shard and gave her finger to her
daughter to suck on. Susanna couldn’t remember what day she cut open her
fingers, or even how many times she used the method to feed her daughter.
Susanna had lost all track of time in the unchanging darkness. But the drops of
blood weren't enough. "Please, Mommy, some more. Cut another finger,"
Gayaney begged. Susanna made more cuts in her flesh, feeling nothing because of
the bitter cold. She put her hand to her child's mouth, squeezing her fingers
to make more blood come. Susanne knew at this point that she was going to die,
but she wanted – now more than life itself – for her daughter to live.
On Dec. 14, the eighth day of their nightmare, rescue
workers opened a small hole that let in a slender shaft of light. "We're
saved!" Susanna cried. "There's a child in here, be careful not to
hurt her!" she screamed as her rescuers got closer. Her husband, Gerkham,
had been uninjured in the quake and was now searching desperately with the
other rescuers for his family whom he had left more than a week ago at his
sister’s. When Susanna emerged, the two tearfully embraced, but only for a
moment. Susanna, along with Gayaney, were placed on a stretcher and flown to
Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, some 60 miles away. From there, Gayaney was taken
to Children's Hospital No. 3, and Susanna was transported to the Armenian
National hospital.
Gayaney was in intensive care for four days, hooked up to
intravenous bottles that dripped liquids into her parched body. Her temperature
was dangerously low, her blood alarmingly thick and she was in shock. Gayaney
was also in a deep state of depression, and wouldn't even talk or smile.
Susanna, also dehydrated, was given intravenous fluids and placed in a
coffin-like box so that pressurized oxygen could be pumped around her as a
treatment against her previous exposure and resultant hypothermia. It was only
then that doctors discovered that Susanna, who also had a 7-year-old son who
was not hurt in the earthquake, was also two months' pregnant. Gayaney now had
something to smile about.
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood,” Jesus explained,
holding up the wine. (Luke 22:20) Jesus’ claim must have really puzzled the
disciples. As good Jewish boys, they’d been taught from childhood the story of
the Passover wine: it symbolized the lamb’s blood that the Israelites, enslaved
long ago in Egypt, had painted on the door posts and lentils of their homes.
That blood literally kept death from their homes and saved their firstborn, -
human and animal alike. And it was this last miracle that had helped deliver the
Israelites from the clutches of the Egyptians.
So, for hundreds, maybe even thousands of generations
thereafter, the Jewish people had observed the Passover by sacrificing a lamb.
Every year the blood of the lamb would be poured, and every year the
deliverance would be celebrated. The law, you see, had required the spilling of
the blood of a lamb. A perfect lamb. A lamb without spot or blemish. And that
blood would be enough – at least for that year. It would be enough to fulfill
the law and to satisfy the command. It would be enough to satisfy God’s
justice. But it could not take away sin “…because it is impossible for the
blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4) Sacrifices could
only offer temporary solutions; only God could offer an eternal one. So, God did
– he sent Jesus.
And beneath the rubble of a fallen world, he pierced his
hands. In the wreckage of a collapsed humanity, he ripped open his side. His
children were trapped in sin, so he gave His blood. It was all he had. His
friends were gone. His strength was waning. His possessions had been gambled
away in a dice game at his feet. Even his Father had turned his face on him. His
blood was all he had. But his blood was all that was needed. “If anyone is
thirsty,” Jesus once said, “Let him come to me and drink.” (Jn 7:37)
But admitting we’re thirsty doesn’t come easy for us. False
fountains temporarily soothe our thirst with the swallows of the pleasures of
this life. But there comes a time in each of our lives when pleasures don’t
satisfy. There comes a dark hour in every life when the world caves in and
we’re left trapped in the rubble of reality, parched and dying. And frankly, some
would rather die than admit it. But others are willing to admit it and escape
death. So, the thirsty come. And the thirsty are a pretty motley bunch – bound
together by the common experiences of broken dreams and collapsed promises.
Fortunes that were never made, or families that were never built, or promises
that were never kept. We’re just like Gayaney – a wide-eyed child trapped in
the basement of our failures. And we’re very thirsty.
Not thirsty so much for fame, or possessions, or passion or
even romance. We’ve drank plenty from those pools, and what we’ve found is that
they’re like salt water in the desert: they don’t quench – they kill. “Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” (Matt. 5:6) Righteousness.
That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what we’re really thirsty for. We’re thirsty for a
clean conscience. We crave a clean slate. We long for a fresh start. We pray
for a hand that can reach into the dark cavern of our world and do for us the
one thing we can’t do for ourselves – make us right again. “Mommy, I’m so
thirsty,” Gayaney begged. “It was then I remembered I had my own blood,”
Susanna explained. And her hand was cut, the blood was poured and her child was
saved.
“God, I’m so thirsty,” we pray. “It is my blood, the blood
of the new covenant,” Jesus said, “shed to set many free from their sins.”
(Matt. 26:28) And the hand was pierced, the blood was poured and the children
are saved.
Grace,
Randy
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