Still Thirsty?

I am a chronic joiner. If there is a group or a club around some topic or hobby in which I am even remotely interested, I want to be a part of it. Of course I don't have any time at all to be actually active in anything, so often being a nominal member has to be enough. The biggest draw for me is community with other people who like the same stuff I do.

I think this is human nature, to want to connect with other people. We are relational people, and to our very souls, we hunger for interaction, for a relationship.

I have lately come to realize, however, that I don't need to be a part of everything. I love being with other people, or connecting in some way, but the truth is, I no longer need that human approval or validation that I once did. I've come to realize in fact that my need to constantly join, to be a part of everything, was the spiritual equivalent of emotional eating: there is a hole we can't understand. We know something is missing, but we don't know what. So we fill that void with... something. For some it's other people. For some it's food or drink. Anything, so long as it helps, even temporarily, to fill that hole in our lives.

Jesus recognized this Spiritual gap in a woman near a well in Samaria (John 4:1-26).

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

Jesus wanted for this woman to recognize the depth of her Spiritual thirst.  When He told her about her five husbands, he wasn't saying it just to prove He was a prophet. He already had her attention and curiosity. Instead He was telling her: just as your body thirsts, your soul thirsts also, for a relationship, a communion, with One who will satisfy. 

The truth is, I no longer need to be a joiner, because I already belong. I belong to the family of God, a brotherhood of saints. I no longer require the water of being validated by others, because I have been quenched by the Christ, the Living Water. In Him, my cup is full: my Spirit overflows with His love.

Like the woman at the well, I have gone looking for a way to quench my thirst for another day, and have found a way to quench it for Eternity.