Cool Water

I have a tattooish on my arm. In a house of writers, it took Bradford fifteen minutes to find a pen (oh technology) and then another few minutes to illegibly scrawl

HI
DRATE
NOW

You know you are close with your flatmates when they ask you about the frequency of your pee (Jenna never did this, and she loves pee. She writes about it all the time on her blog). I am forgetting to drink water, and so Bradford has reminded me.

And the idea of water has led me to a few other thoughts. Christ uses water more than any other analogy to represent himself. I wonder if this is lost on us, as we are not a desert people, and water is so accessible. I rarely remember feeling thirsty for more than a few minutes, because thirst is so easily quenched.

But it wasn't in the time of Christ. I would assume that food would have been slightly more accessible than water. And so I'm thinking about all of this in the context of why I don't pray, or make time for God. Or why I see my friends having a hard time being vulnerable with Christ. I think a bit of it comes down to expectations. I expect God to do things for me, help me, guide me, whatever. And not all of these expectations are wrong, but as Oswald Chambers says, when you want things from God, more than God Himself, you're fucked. Or something along those lines.

And so we have a lot of hunger pains. For love, for money, for security, adventure, excitement, fame, power. These are deep gnawing pains that keep us up at night. And so we hope that prayer will either give us those things or take the desire for them away completely. And I think we have all realized that it will not (most of the time). And so we slink our thoughts out of prayer and into fantasy or worry.

But here is the great thing I've discovered: Christ is like water when you are starving.

It doesn't satisfy exactly, it's not what you think you want. But it takes the edge of your pain away, it refreshes you for the time being. And, you can not eat for a month and survive. You are dead after a few days without water. I am spiritually dead after a few days of not praying, or being open with God. His water has run out of me, and I'm living out of a vague idea of what he maybe might want me to do, or doing whatever I please. And I'm missing a lot along the way. I am missing a lot of opportunities to encourage and be encouraged, I am missing God's warnings and his leadings, I am living a half-life.

I am consistently amazed at how I can go into prayer one person, and come out another. And I come out better. I am still hungry for things (although sometimes my hunger is taken away completely) but I am filled with the peace and love of Christ. I believe when he says "seek first the kingdom of God and all else will fall behind".

I wrote awhile ago about how anxiety should be considered hunger pains for God. I am coming back to that realization more and more. That just being in the presence of God, being reminded how the creator of the freaking universe wants to talk to me, is some beautiful stuff.

So, drink Christ. And breathe him in. And know that we both think your ass looks fabulous today.