If we had noticed that the young men of the present day found it harder and harder to get the right answers to sums, we should consider that this had been adequately explained the moment we discovered that schools had for some years ceased to teach arithmetic. After that discovery we should turn a deaf ear to people who offered explanations of a vaguer and larder kind - people who said that the influence of Einstein had sapped the ancestral belief in fixed numerical relations, or that gangster films had undermined the desire to get right answers, or that the evolution of consciousness was now entering on its post-arithmetical phase. Where a clear and simple explanation completely covers the facts no other explanation is in court. If the younger generation have never been told what the Christians say and never heard any arguments in defense of it, then their agnosticism or indifference is fully explained. There is no need to look any further: no need to talk about the general intellectual climate of the age, the influence of mechanistic civilization on the character of urban life. And having discovered that the cause of their ignorances is lack of instruction, we have also discovered the remedy. There is nothing in the nature of the younger generation which incapacitates them for receiving Christianity. If any one is prepared to tell them, they are apparently ready to hear.... The young people today are un-Christian because their teachers have been either unwilling or unable to transmit Christianity to them.... None can give to another what he does not possess himself.
-C.S. Lewis
The Business of Heaven
I find myself, especially as of late, feeling spiritually thirsty rather often. I like to think I'm a bit like David, the psalmist, in that he was constantly worshiping the Lord (or needing to worship the Lord). I can practically guarantee you that David's cup overfloweth-ed when he was meeting the Lord in praise and worship. For crying out loud his wife rebuked him at one point for praising the Lord in a way she believed to be unproper. And God rewarded her for looking out for David's propriety by closing her womb. Oops.
David could not help but cry out to God, to praise, and to worship our Lord. It's what fueled him. I'm fueled in this same way. I honestly believe that we all are, at our core, made to worship the Heavenly Father and spending time in His presence is the only way to feel really whole. My spiritual thirstiness, sadly, and I don't enjoy admitting it comes from not reading the Word, not praying, not seeking the Lord, and not worshiping as regularly as I should be. I truly feel a sense of thirst, a need that sits at the core of who I am to meet up with my Creator and have Him fill my cup back up.
Here's what I've been thinking a good deal lately as I've been thirsty and needing to carve out time to meet with Him: what about all the people out there who don't know how? I imagine, even of people who are confirmed believers there must be a good deal who don't know how to really seek Him and be re-fueled, have that inner thirst quenched. And for anyone who isn't even aware of His reality, oh my. No wonder people seek out all this other nonsense to fill themselves up, to try and get rid of that void. Yikes!
Do you know that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour when I was six years old? And I meant it. I've loved Him since before then. But I did not know what He meant by "the living water" until I was probably in my 20's, maybe just a little before that... I think I'm rambling now, but if nothing else I'd like to encourage you to seek Him. He'll meet you, fill you up, and wrap His arms around you no matter where you're at if you do like David did. Just tell Him what's on your heart and let Him know you want Him around.
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