Three Thirsts 

My colleague, Andries Combrink, wrote this a few years ago and I can't say it any better. 

In Isaiah 55:1 we are offered water, wine, and milk.

These three drinks match our deepest needs. We all are needy and must be taken care of by a loving yet almighty God.

Water relates to our need for refreshment. When you are most thirsty and most desperate and totally dehydrated, water is what you want and nothing else. God invites us to receive refreshment, restoration, reviving, and a new beginning which he only can give.

Milk relates to our need for ongoing nourishment and growth. When you want a little baby to grow day after day, you give it milk again and again. God is not just for thirsty emergencies, but even more for sustainable health. He invites us not only to come alive with water, but also to be stable and strong with milk.

Wine relates to our need for excitement, joy, and celebration. We want to be truly alive. Yes, we need to be strong and stable. But that is not all we need to be alive. No matter how unemotional, laid-back, and poker-faced we may look like to others, there is an excited child inside every one of us that God wants to bring to life for joy and delight: for shouting and singing and dancing and playing and skipping and running and jumping and laughing.

When we come to God, we will find that in our relationship with him we will receive more than resuscitation or even growth—we will find that a relationship with God, in Christ, brings excitement and joy!  

(Andries Combrink is a minister Emeritus in the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa. He is married to Marthie, father of three and granddad to a teenager. He serves the Lord directing a worldwide internet portal for protestant church leaders called "Pastoral".)