Thirsty No More

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

 (John, 19:28)

This writer still remembers those two great Christian actors, Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans singing, "Happy Trails." If there is anything that I have learned in my long life, dealing with other human beings, traveling the entire world, just how unhappy some trails can be. The test of our discipleship is our desire to quench the thirst of the thirsty. Jesus thirsted for a lost and dying world. Many of my fellow human beings have a thirsting faith to bring life forces to others. There is a famous hymn, "Others Lord yes others, let this my motto be."

It is that thirst which sent Christian missionaries around the world, taking with them in word and spirit the message of Salvation. It is that thirst which kept many of our heads in books so that on many professional levels we could make life better for our fellow man (doctors, nurses, lawyers, soldiers, explorers, etc). In a day when this blind man is told that most young people ride around in the comfort of an air conditioned vehicle with a cup of cold drink of some type in their face, we know there are those who have never known true thirst. God deliver me from people who have never felt pain, never wanted for anything, never been hungry, never been thirsty. Those of us raised in the heat and under the bright sun of farm agriculture know what it is like to sweat and thirst. In another article, I have described the greatest thirst I have ever experienced... in Egypt. One of the greatest stories ever told, our blessed Lord's encounter with a woman at a public well... the one thing they had in common, the need for cool water.

70% of the earth's surface is covered by water. Most of the pure water of the earth is found in the Great Lakes of America. One of creation's greatest miracles is God's ability to balance the equation of turning salt water of oceans into pure water, coming from the atmosphere in just the right size drops to water vegetation, fill rivers and lakes in just the right time and energy. Next to the coagulation of blood in animal life, I can think of no greater scientific miracle than the photosynthesis including water in plant life. The two things the atheists have never been able to explain, God, caretaker of the planets and his ability to deal with the individual mind in its relationship to right and wrong. The human mind thirsts for a knowledge of the absolutes of right and wrong.

How mysterious it is that Satan, often without our even realizing what is happening so confuses our concepts of right and wrong, even our thirst for knowledge. Satan's ambition is to lead as many people to Hell with him as possible. Just as he lead 30% of all the angels in glory toward damnation with him. He is the great deceiver.

Shelton was about 25, did not have a job, needed work. Back then, over 30 years ago, I would still hire someone to drive my car back to the area where my few surviving relatives still lived. I would always ride by the old school house which I attended for 12 years, the old church house which my ancestors had attended to since 1874. The home place, where my driver would describe how rapidly everything was deteriorating since none of my family lived there anymore. This time, I went by to visit two cousins, two sisters who lived in their old family home, one bed ridden-dying with cancer. Driving up, the older sister with her walker was hanging laundry on the clothesline. Here is a woman who taught school for 40 years, trustee of a college, supporter of many people in the community. Yet these two sisters had outlived all of their cousins-neighbors, had no one to help them. The young people in the community there, as now, were sitting at home drawing government checks for doing nothing. Patty, the youngest sister, soon to die, said, "Of all the people I know, I wanted to see you the most."

On the way back, Shelton confessed to me that he had left the church many years before, no longer believed. It came out that he was HIV-Positive, under treatment, soon to die. He told me how all of his friends had deserted him. He told me about two close friends who now kept the glass he used, his eating ware separated from theirs. Later, his mother, surviving in a small nearby town told me the horror story of finding a funeral home to handle his body.

Before Shelton died, he begged me to assist him with suicide. Perhaps he found someone who did help him. Anyway, his thirst for friendship, happiness, Salvation was never quenched.

Another young black man, who I hired to drive me to the VA Hospital, also HIV-Positive, told me about the screams of his wife when she learned of his disease. I have written about my own first cousin's death from Aids. He was a brilliant organist-musician in a large Manhattan church. After his death, his only sibling, his sister called me and said, only one other person, one of our cousins was at his funeral with me. Where were all the friends and acquaintances he entertained in his own beautiful home and on whom he had spent so much money, money left to him by my mother. This dead cousin was an Air Force Veteran, and received no help in his sickness.

The writer, C.S. Lewis said, "Hell is getting your way throughout all eternity." God is boss, he is in charge AND, he uses whatever he needs... warfare, disease or drought. A good friend, doctor, fought the blood disease, Hemophilia his entire life. Treatment at UNC CH Hospital, blood transfusion, infected with the AIDS virus, leading to his death. His wife was deceased. His son said to me, "I cannot find a lawyer to take the case, they all say the same thing, I cannot withstand an IRS audit and this always happens when you take on anything powerful, such as the University."

This very week, this totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, Medical Officer Veteran endured the most vicious telephone call from a VA official that one can imagine. You see, government officials, in the main never thirst. They have high paying jobs and cannot be fired. Like politicians, bureaucrats, professors, scientific foundations, they have never known life in the fight, only the benefits of living isolated from the battles of life. It is like the Catholic priest who writes books on marriage or raising children, inheritors of trust funds who have never wanted for anything. Those who neither understand sin or thirst. We are who bewitched, besieged, by the "cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts for other things entering in" (Matthew, 4:19). Know about life and the need for the everlasting arm of God. Most people I know, family-friends-associates have their hand on the doorknob-door of faith but, they never have the joy of opening the door and being engulfed by Christian grace... Thirsty No More.