"Are you not thirsty?" said the lion. "I'm dying of thirst," said Jill. "Then drink," said the lion. "May I? could I? Would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill. The lion answered this only by a look and very low growl.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. "Will you promise not to do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill. "I make no such promise," said the lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that she [came] a step nearer the lion. "Do you eat girls?" she said. "I have swallowed up, consumed girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the lion
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. "Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." The lion said, "There is no other stream." (from C. S. Lewis "The Chronicles of Narnia")Lewis goes on to explain that this old world is full of those who are thirsty. Yes, if we go to the stream we will be devoured, consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit, but I would rather be on fire now, consumed now, than forever on fire and never burned out.
How DELICIOUS the sound of that stream. We long for our thirst to be quenched. Remember a time when you were desperately thirsty? I recall playing hockey at the slough in our pasture when I was a boy. By the time we finished and walked the half mile home I was aching with thirst.
I ate some snow, even after calculating the risk. Our elders had told us of a child who ate snow containing a lizard egg. The egg hatched in his stomach and he had this terrible problem of a live lizard in his innards. I was really thirsty that day.
But there is a deeper thirst than that which water quenches. "Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy corn without money, and eat, and at no cost, wine and milk" (Isaiah 55)
The human heart hungers and thirsts for deeper things, things which water and food and sex cannot satisfy. Do you remember a time when you were desperately thirsting for God? Can you still remember the feeling?
Singer Katy Perry experienced a desperate need for God's grace the afternoon she broke up with her boyfriend. She wrote the song "By the Grace of God" which says she was "running on empty". She thought of ending it all, but by the Grace of God she found strength and hope again.Jesus said, "Anyone who drinks the water I shall give will never be thirsty again: the water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14").
