I'm a Rock Star, not an Alcoholic

I have been having a fantabulous time in Seattle with my sister Wendy -- cross country skiing, hiking, finding bald eagles, exploring beautiful islands and rain soaked trails.

Yesterday, we were visiting a property she is selling on Whidbey Island.  After checking her property, we were ravenous but discovered that most restaurants on Whidbey Island close on Tuesdays in the winter.


Finally we stumbled upon a delightful little place that was open. As we got out of the car, a man stomped out of the restaurant. He had the look of an aged hippie - bandana, long grey hair, grizzled, lots of denim. He glared at us and shouted, "I would boycott this place! They were rude to me!"
"Oh," I said, "I am so sorry! What happened?"
"They wouldn't serve me a second shot of tequila!"
Wendy could not keep from a burst of laughter.
He scowled at us and said, "I'm a rock star, not an alcoholic."

As he stormed away, Wendy and I slipped into the restaurant. "Frankly," I whispered to her, "That commends the place to me."

As we settled down into our seats, it came to me immediately what God was saying. So many of us think we are rock stars in our character, talent, and spiritual nature. However, the sad truth is we are miserable sinners with no hope of stardom in purity, righteousness, or meeting God's Holy standards. We are all as deluded as that poor man. We ARE spiritual alcoholics, needing drink after drink to sustain an unquenchable thirst if we are not drinking of the water of life that emanates from the only source that can quench our thirst eternally.

We can drive all day looking for a place to satisfy our hunger, to fill that hole in our gut that rumbles and growls and is always empty. I think we are designed with a God-sized hunger and thirst and we will seek every way to satisfy it, but ONLY ONE WILL.

Jesus beckons us: Come to me, all ye who are thirsty, hungry, weary, overburdened...and I will give you life.

And He doesn't close on Tuesdays.

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John 4:10-15

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”