Thirst, Spiritual – Charles Spurgeon

THE panting of a thirsty deer is something terrible to see. It appears to thirst all over; every pore of its body is thirsting. It is not alone that heated tongue, those snorting nostrils, that glaring eye, but the creature in every part, in every hair, thirsts and pants. And so with the believer when he is without his God; if his soul be in a right state, he longs with all the force of his being to get back into his former happy condition. There is no staying him, there is no making him pause. Surely the psalmist chose thirst for this reason, because it is a longing not to be appeased. Men have gone for days without food, but they could not during the same length of time abstain from drink. In a long and weary march soldiers have been able to endure much absence of solids, but we find in cases like the marches of Alexander, that soldiers have died by hundreds from want of drink. It has been said hunger you can palliate for awhile, but thirst is awful. You cannot reason with it; thirst has no ears; you cannot forget it—the more thirsty the man becomes the more does the want thrust itself before him. O my God, painful as is such a spiritual thirst, yet would I desire to be always in this state when I am not in immediate fellowship with you. I would be so thirsty as never to find a moment’s peace, nor ease, nor comfort, except when I am near to you. “Tears have been my meat,” says David, “day and night;” as though he could get nothing from himself by way of comfort, for his soul flowed over at his eyes in briny tears, which made him thirstier still. Still his cry went up at morn and midnight, “My God, my God, I must behold you, I must approach you, I must enjoy your love. Shut me not up in this dungeon, cast me not from your presence, take not your Holy Spirit from me, bring me to yourself again, for I long, I groan, I faint, I die for you. O come to me and manifest your favor.”