Obeying and Thirst

A week before my surgery date, I had to make a pre-op visit to the hospital. I gave blood; I had an EKG; I answered pages of questions about symptoms and health history. Then I signed the forms. You know the ones—where you acknowledge that what you are about to endure could kill you.

One of the written instructions I received along with information about organ donation (sheesh) said, “No food or drink after midnight on the day of the procedure.” The surgeon’s nurse called the day before my procedure to make sure I got it: NO FOOD OR DRINK AFTER MIDNIGHT.

The food part I could stomach, so to speak. The drink part was another matter.

I am probably one of the few adults who sleeps with a sippy cup beside the bed. That way when I take a drink in the middle of the night while half-comatose, I won’t drench myself with juice or water or Fresca. I have this antibody condition that keeps my sinus tissues dryer than they should be.

Sure enough, when I awoke the day of surgery, I longed for a cup of java. On the way to the hospital, I gazed at the water bottle my husband keeps in the car. I’d never paid much attention to it, but now it mocked me from its little plastic holder. I thought, “If only I could touch a drop to my tongue.”

According to a 2004 report by the World Health Organization, more than 2.6 billion people—that’s more than 40 percent of everybody in the entire world—lack access to safe drinking water. In short, they thirst. How is it that I’m so out of touch with the way so many live? How is it that I am so rich and they are so poor?

As I lay in my private admitting room last Wednesday morning, all I could think about was thirst. I thought about how Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” In a part of the world where people diet and discipline themselves to cut back on drinking, we can miss the power in a simile about longing for those things. But last Wednesday morning, I craved water. And I wondered what it would look like if I longed for righteousness as much as I coveted ice chips.

I thought, too, of Jesus suffering on the cross. He didn’t say, “My wrists hurt where they nailed me to the wood,” nor “My back aches where lashes have exposed me to the tissues.”

He said, “I thirst.”

I thought of Lazarus. Not Lazarus of Bethany, whom Jesus raised from the dead. But the other Lazarus:

And a certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores.

Now it came about that the poor man died and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.

And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And [the rich man] cried out and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame.”

But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.”

And he said, “Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.”

But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.”

But he said, “No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!”

But he said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.”

The rich man had the ability to alleviate Lazarus’s suffering in his earthly lifetime, but instead he spent his resources on himself. And in doing so he had his reward, short-lived as it was.

So I sit now in my room at home by the hospital bed ordered to keep me from using my good clavicle to pull myself up and thus strain the one that needs to heal. After spending two-and-a-half days at Baylor with my husband sleeping on a chair at my feet and with a comfortable flow of loving friends and family, I sit once again in the midst of my many things. Thanks to the prayers of hundreds (some of whom I’ve never met) and good medical care, my pain never inched much above a “3” on a scale of 1–10. And yesterday, my cumulative total of pain meds for the day was two over-the-counter Tylenol tabs.

Still, I am uncomfortable. And it’s not the stupid sling I have to sleep with once again that has me bothered. Lazarus’s story and my thirst and the forms reminding me of my mortality have had an effect. Why do I have so much when so many have so little?

This morning while my husband and daughter are worshiping with the gathered church, I have watched a video of what Samaritan’s Purse continues to do for victims of the tsunami. New homes. Water treatment centers. Job training. Hope restored to millions via very little cash.

And I watched a Gospel for Asia video about kids whose “good day” means actually finding something in the garbage heap, and how $26/month means clothing, food, education, water for “the lesser of these” made in God’s image.

Two nights of Pizza Hut delivery here buys a month of medical care, education, uniforms, daily meals and spiritual guidance for them. What if I were in their shoes? If I were them, what would I want me to do?

Many Christians worry about the “liberalism” of the “social gospel.” But here’s the question that keeps nagging me: “Shouldn’t the gospel have earth-shaking social ramifications?”