Sharing the Well

There is a Caedmon's Call song called "Share the Well."  It recalls the image of the woman at the well in John when Jesus tells her that if she drinks the water He offers she will never thirst again.  But I must admit I find myself, at times, longing for God and His provision in a way that might be best described as thirst.  It makes me wonder, am I doing something wrong?

David had this same issue as he wrote, "my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Ps. 63)."  So what gives? David sought and thirsted for God. I could give lots of examples of Godly people (people who are way better than me) who expressed this thirst.  Were they doing it wrong too?

As we enter Lent (the 40 days preceding Easter) and reflect on our Christian walk, our mortality, our shared journey with Jesus and the "State of the Union" of our life, this question about thirst might be a good one.  I wish I could offer you an answer that gave you such focus and definition that you, as Jesus told the woman, would never thirst again.  But I won't because I find that faith often sends you to new questions rather than pat answers.  So I will speculate based on my personal walk.

I find I am most quenched and satisfied with my walk with God when I am connected to God by things like serving, giving, worshiping, loving and living out my faith.  When I get "intellectual" and doctrinal about my faith, I grow further away from God rather than closer to from God.  I had a friend in a previous congregation that loved to come to Bible study.  He would always ask the intellectual question and would take the discussion into the theoretical.  I observed that as his influence on the class became more assertive we tended to do something that I see a lot.  People would "pool" their ignorance and say the strangest things like "My God is like ____ (fill in the blank)." I wanted to say, 1) God isn't your possession, 2) God doesn't change His nature because of you and, by the way, 3) God isn't "like" anything we can really put into appropriate words.  I think God told Moses to call Him "I am" because it left Moses with a question ... not an answer.  Maybe there is great wisdom and some healthy thirst in that!  Randy