REAL DRINK AND REAL FOOD
There are food and drink items that have had insane price tags. As per the Guinness Book, the most expensive food item in the world is the caviar named ‘Almas from rare Iranian Albino Beluga sturgeons’. ‘Almas’ means diamond in Russian and with its extreme rarity, has a price tag of $34,500 for 1kg. The most expensive drink in the world is the ‘Billionaire Vodka’. Billionaire Vodka is triple distilled and is made from a unique natural spring water. The vodka, made from a secret recipe, is first ice-filtered, then filtered through Nordic birch charcoal and lastly passed through sand made from crushed diamonds and gems before being contained within a receptacle, which is a Platinum and Rhodium encased diamond encrusted crystal bottle with solid gold labels and neckband encrusted with diamonds and crowned with a numbered diamond speckled hand mounted platinum flocked foil seal. The price tag is $3.7million.
Food and drink serve to satisfy man’s innate needs of hunger and thirst. Yet while food and drink serve to satisfy, they do so only temporarily. In John 4, we read of the story of the Samaritan woman, with whom Jesus converses about water.
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.” (v13,14)
And so, while water does satisfy the physical thirst of man, there is a greater thirst within man- one of needing the indwelling of God. In Pascal’s words, “there is a God shaped vacuum within us and only God can fill it”. No religion or philosophy can make God to come within us and dwell within man because God cannot dwell within man unless the sin of man is taken away. The only One who does that is Jesus and hence his words to the Samaritan woman. The one who receives Jesus as his savior will go on to have the indwelling of God within him, which takes him to a position of never being thirsty again.
Jesus goes on to talk about food later in that chapter. “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work (v34). While water keeps us hydrated and alive, food makes us strong for the tasks at hand. After Jesus comes within to make a dwelling within man, purpose is infused into life only when man makes a decision to live for God and fulfill his will here on earth. God has a purpose for each person here on earth and no other motive can be as satisfying as finding that will and executing it during our temporary phase here on earth.
Beluga caviar and Billionaire vodka are expensive because people are willing to pay for something perceived to be of that value. Yet like water and food, these satisfy only for a moment. How much more valuable should be the salvation offered by Jesus for our parched souls and the mission infused within of expending our lives to fulfill the will of God?
