I am thirsty.
John 19:28
After Jesus’ speaks He was offered wine. This sour wine was a cheap wine that the Roman soldiers drank while waiting for those crucified to die. Thinking on the wretchedness, cruelty, and heinousness of that day, they drank the wine not so much to celebrate as to dull their own pain. Can you imagine being a Roman soldier and your job was to crucify people? Goodness, so many thoughts on that statement.
Today’s Good Friday. That’s an oxymoron. Think about it. Did you ever wonder why they call it Good Friday? Was Good Friday all that good? After a night of torture, that would have ended the life of the best of men, the man is hung on the cross to die. Murdered.
Another oxymoron. The One who was thirsty on the cross is the resurrected living water.
“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”
John 4:10
Jesus reveals that He is the living water. He is the Messiah. He is the only one that can satisfy our thirst. He is the only one that can provide eternal life. He had to die on the cross in order to do that.
Thank the Lord that we know the rest of the story. Thank the Lord for the rest of the story. Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday. The day of resurrection. Followers of Christ know that the cross means nothing without the resurrection. The cross without the resurrection is just a dead man in a tomb. A dead man in a tomb leaves the world thirsty. The resurrection allows for an eternal well springing up to eternal life.
“But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life”
John 4:13-14
The events of that day are so difficult for me to think about, to look at, that I can only look at them in flashes, in blinks, for to gaze on those events full on causes my mind to shut down. Your’s too? But, look we must. How else will we see the Living Waters?