It ain't coming back.

I have worked in an environment that does a lot of tastings. Food tastings, beverage tastings, lots of tastings.

This has been my office.

And what usually gets served with tastings are things that get tastes out of your mouth. Palate cleansers, to be exact.

Oyster crackers, chocolate chips, ice water, coffee beans to smell, flavored ices. Those are all things that will clear your palate depending on what you just tasted.

My job has been a busy job. 16 hour days on weekends in the summer. 70 hours a week.

And you want to know something crazy? Sometimes it would be midnight, and I had been there for 15 hours, and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. And I hadn’t sat down since my drive to work. And then I would realize that I was really hungry.

So what does a place that does tastings have a plethora of?

Things that cleanse palates.

Oyster crackers. Chocolate chips. Ice water. Coffee.

Which I would then eat a plethora of.

After about a year of that, my body started telling me that I hadn’t fed it. For a long time.

I knew it was right. I had just been tiding it over.

I got these flowers a few weeks ago.

I don’t know if you can tell or not, but they were tulips at one time.

 Beautiful, gorgeous, white tulips. But they went the way the Bible says they will go and their beauty faded. However, one night I went to bed and they were gorgeous and then when I woke up the next morning they looked like this.

As I was eating breakfast that morning, with the dead flowers in front of me, I saw that there was still about an inch of water in the bottom of the vase.

Did I mention that the flowers were beyond dead at this point?

The next morning I sat in the same spot, eating my breakfast, and I noticed this:

All of the water was gone.

But I thought the things were dead yesterday?

The thought crossed my mind that I should give them more water and then I thought, “But honey, they ain’t coming back. It’s too late to tide them over.”

I had no idea that dead things could still suck life out of something, even though the life they were taking was not going to be bringing them back.

I was talking to an acquaintance the other day who lives a somewhat “un-Christian” life, if we can call it that. Let’s call it that because, well, she isn’t a Christian. As she was regaling me with all of her lifestyle decisions and the subsequent drama all I could think was, “Chick, you are running from drinking fountain to drinking fountain, aren’t you? Looking for something to tide you over. Never getting a full glass of water. Newsflash, babe: that won’t be bringing any life to you. You cannot successfully water a dead flower.”

Maybe this is admitting ignorance, but I hadn’t ever really thought that those who don’t have the Living Water are still drinking, you know what I mean? Like, what they are drinking isn’t bringing any life to them, but it is tiding them over. Or so they think so.

Living a life just being tide over is a miserable existence. Trust me, I know. It’s a life lived hungry. A life lived parched. Always on the brink of starvation. I don’t think those who live like that realize that living their life in constant search of the next oasis still means they are in the middle of the desert.

We all run from well to well to fountain to well, looking for something to tide us over, don’t we? Looking for something to suck the life out of, even if, for some, it won’t be bringing any life; even if the life ain’t coming back.

Jeremiah 2:12-13 “Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Be appalled at this, it says.

I looked at those dead flowers. I looked at my acquaintance who keeps running and was saddened that she doesn’t realize that she is a dead flower; dead because the water she is drinking doesn’t bring life. She can drink all she wants, but, if she goes in the same vein her whole life….well…that life, honey, it ain’t coming back.

Broken cisterns hold no water.

But Living Water doesn’t leave things broken.

Living Water is an oasis that doesn’t run dry, which means we don’t have to keep running in the desert, which means we don’t have to live thirsty, which means that life is coming back.

Drink deep today, my friends. Stop running. Stop living thirsty.