The season of Lent is a good time to ask a question: Have you ever been thirsty, I mean, really thirsty. I have. I remember playing football in high school, in the San Joaquin valley of California. In those days, we were not allowed to drink water in practice, no matter how thirsty we got. Thankfully, those days have changed. After practice, I would be so dehydrated that I would stand under the shower in the locker room and guzzle water down. All the other players did, too. It was not healthy but it was the way it was done.
I think about this when it comes to spiritual things. When I look around my world it seems to me that men and women are thirsty for something more. They look in countless places to assuage the thirst, but the never ending search goes on.
When I was a freshmen in college I discovered a poem that haunts me. I find it to be too real. It is a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The song "Richard Cory", written by Paul Simon and recorded by Simon & Garfunkel for their second studio album, Sounds of Silence (1966), was based on this poem. Here are the words of the poem.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
In contrast, Hear the words of Jesus, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me…from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
To this I say, “Thank God, for the refreshing water of Life.”
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