On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink (John 7:37).
There is a longing for heaven at the heart of every man and woman on Earth. We know intuitively that we are created for more than this Earth, for there is a nostalgia for heaven. "Nostalgia" comes from two Greek words: nostos, meaning to return home, and algos, meaning pain. Originally the word meant homesickness because that is an incurable malady; the only thing that cures it is home. While we live in this world, there will always be this inner longing for something, a void, a hole in our lives that nothing seems to satisfy except God Himself. We try filling the emptiness by drinking alcohol—but that doesn't satisfy it. Fame doesn't fulfill it or pleasure. Nor will money. The emptiest people on Earth try to fill the chasm with the things above. Nothing, not even family, can fill what we long for in our souls. To deny or ignore the longings God has put in our creation deadens our inner being—the part that aches for Him. To refuse to admit to our spiritual longing is to put our souls in peril. Aldous Huxley said: "Sooner or later one asks even of Beethoven, even of Shakespeare… “Is this all?” C.S. Lewis described this as “the inconsolable longing…news from a country we have never visited.”
Augustine spoke of having this inner feeling long before his conversion to Christ. C.S. Lewis struggled hard and fought against the idea that the source of his "inconsolable longing" was his thirst for God. Lewis said of his search for God: "They might as well talk about the mouse's search for the cat." If it is true that God has built a longing for Himself into the framework of our being, then why try to fill the void with all kinds of things that are not Him? Our text for today is Jesus crying out in the middle of a crowd attending the most notable day of the Feast of Tabernacles. His cry is for those who are thirsty to come to Him and drink of His Spirit:
37On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:37-39).
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” Jesus was saying that out of the temple of His life would flow the refreshing, life-giving, healing power of the Spirit. When Christ lives in us and is given full ownership to rule and reign over us, this river or spring will flow from the center of our being, just as He said. When Christ is enthroned in the temple of our hearts, His Spirit will flow out from our innermost being to those around us, bringing us new life and those around us. Why deny your spiritual thirst any longer? Come to Christ and let Him fill your emptiness. Keith Thomas
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