Understanding Jesus: Come To Me and Drink
Reflections
We can’t be human without God. That’s what Christians believe. We believe that this human life is a great gift, that every part of it is designed by God and therefore means something, that every part of it is blessed by God and therefore to be enjoyed, that every part of it is accompanied by God and therefore workable.
We can’t get away from God; he’s there whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not. We can refuse to participate in God; we can act as if God weren’t our designer, provider, and covenant presence. But when we refuse, we’re less; our essential humanity is less. Our lives are diminished and impoverished.
And it’s just this sense of lessness that gives us an important clue to understanding ourselves. We’re aware of something we need or lack most of the time. We’re not complete. We’re not fully human. This sense of being unfinished is pervasive and accounts for a great deal that’s distinctive in us humans. We then attempt to complete ourselves by getting more education or more money, going to another place or buying different clothes, searching out new experiences. The Christian gospel tells us that in and under and around all of these incompletions is God: God is who we need; the God-hunger, the God-thirst is the most powerful drive in us. It’s far stronger than all the drives of sex, power, security, and fame put together.— Eugene H. Peterson
Leap Over a Wall
- Note on a parchment stitched to the lining of Pascal’s coat: FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
- Being thirsty is a sign of readiness to receive Him
- v37 – Jesus cried out! Not preached, cried!
- Jesus’ empathy for us, as He watch us worrying about things we can’t control in life
- His intensity of empathy
- Crying over you when you are at your very worse
- Jesus offers us to come and drink – “His kindness that leads us to our repentance”
- When we don’t feel thirsty for Him, maybe it is judgement for us, when we feel we need nothing
- His intensity of His mission
- His intensity of His vision (v38)
