The Risk of Thirst

10/1/08
A Slice of Infinity
The Risk of Thirst
Jill Carattini

"Air is our element," writes Frederick Buechner, "but water is our heart's delight."

I grew up in a town less than a mile from Lake Michigan, where a lake--if not the Lake--was almost always nearby and often the essential ingredient of our pastimes. Even on the hottest days of summer, water was never in short supply. I don't remember having to take turns with our neighbors to wash cars or water lawns with the intention of rationing the water supply like we do in Atlanta. I remember well-watered parks, the intricacy of the color green, and Lake Michigan as a seemingly endless body of water.

The first time I left West Michigan, I was struck with the sickly feeling of being confined and dehydrated. I was landlocked in Israel, and found myself dreaming often of water.

Israel is an arid land where water is scarce and fought over, its dry season is unrelenting, and its rainy season short-lived. In fact, even in the height of the rainy season, the average is only 2-5 days of rainfall a month. Most of the year there is no rainfall at all. “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,” sang David, “as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). As I panted through the Negev and breathed the dust of Jerusalem, this was not the only scripture that came to life.

The Israelites were a people who knew well the pang of thirst and the uncertainty of dry-spells, and they found it a fitting metaphor to understand their spiritual geography. "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). Likewise, the God of Israel found it a telling description for the restless and wandering children of Israel. "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

I had never thought much about my relationship with water before my path to it was narrowed and its costliness filled my dreams with thirst. But in the dust of Jerusalem, I realized just how a similar resemblance this bore to my relationship with God. Christianity suddenly seemed a worldview that was asking so much more of me than I knew as a teenager in West Michigan surrounded by wells of faith and belief. Christ suddenly seemed to be likening himself to a very particular kind of water--one I could not readily find myself, one that had no substitutes, and one I desperately needed. Standing in a dry land, I saw my weariness, my urgent thirst, and the difficult way of the one who satisfies it. The longing of a soul for God was suddenly more specific and demanding than I realized.

In his novel The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis portrays a picture of the risk required of the thirsty. Jill was parched with thirst and staring at a stream whose sound and sight seemed almost to call her name, but she did not run forward. "I daren't come and drink," she said. And she had good reason to hesitate. Sitting beside the stream was the motionless bulk of the Lion. To her utter surprise, he responded to her. "Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion of her refusal to come. "Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." "There is no other stream," said the Lion.

For the people of Israel, God was both their physical and spiritual hope: "I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water" (Isaiah 41:18). For a girl with the abundance of Lake Michigan in her heart, God is the same: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’" (John 7:37-38). The invitation is risky, the water is costly, but for the thirsty, there is no other stream.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
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