"I Am Thirsty"

“I Am Thirsty”

A short study of Jesus’ humanity

Khen Lim | March 22 2020

Image source: nymag.com

Introduction

From what we can tell scripturally, Jesus was put to the cross at 9:00am. There, under the scorching sunlight, He endured the first six hours. Then darkness came and stayed for three hours. At the end of it, on the ninth hour, He cried out, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?” Translated, Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:45-46)

At the cross, Jesus, the Son of God, showed the world a powerful and evocative sense of humanity. Jesus’ humanness was, in fact, far more so than many of us could display in all our lives. The first three statements He made were focused on people other than Himself. He spoke about His enemies, the two thieves next to Him and also to His earthly mother, Mary, and His disciple, John.

But it was ultimately His final three statements that underscored Jesus’ humanity. In centring on Himself, His last words were about His body, His soul and then His spirit. In speaking of His body, Jesus simply said, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28) although in original Greek, it was only a single four-letter word (more of that later). 

It is this part that we will be concentrating on in this article. When He spoke about His soul, Jesus said, “It is finished” (v.30; Isa 53:10) and then when it came to His Spirit, His last words were, “Father, into Your hands, I commit My spirit” (Lk 23:46) and with that, He was taken up.

Fatherhood in the Trust of God (Part 2 of 2)

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A personal testimony to how God touched me in my love for my children

Khen Lim

Image source: Beliefnet

Never too busy for them

Although in my semi-retirement my routines are not so stringent anymore, I still have a schedule to follow. I don’t travel far to work anymore. I don’t work for any mortal boss and I don’t need to face down any threats of retrenchment like I had in my past. 

Still I do have a boss that I labour joyously for and that is God and that is why I try very hard to keep up with this website. I understand many readers in more than ninety countries around the world who visit and read and in my gratefulness, I do my best to produce worthy things to read every week.

The More Things Change, the More We Realise God Doesn't (Part 2 of 2)

The More Things Change, the More We Realise God Doesn’t (Part 2 of 2)

The Christian strategy against liberalism, political correctness and every change that is destroying the world

Khen Lim

Image source: IFL Science

No bright horizons

The world isn’t just an unhappy place but it is also doomed for destruction. Unless something miraculous happens that would turn it around, we have no way out. And even as we lay the blame squarely at the feet of liberals and corrupt politicians, perhaps we may be partly held accountable too because all these decades, many of us had placed so much importance on prosperity and growth that we ourselves ignored the changes that have shifted our social and cultural perceptions. Some of us might have thought they were harmless. Some might have even believed that these changes would never last.

Near-Death Teaches Us Valuable Lessons

Near-Death Teaches Us Valuable Lessons

Khen Lim



Image source: Shutterstock

Even before my wife and I were married, we made the decision to live with my aged parents instead of finding our own home. With my elder brother living with his own family and working abroad, there was little chance of him being able to help in any real way. The best we could expect from him was a once-a-year visit, which for all intents and purposes, wouldn’t make much difference. 

My mother passed away in October 2015 and would have painfully missed the birth of my twin girls, which was a mere week later. By all accounts, Heather and Bridget were supposed to be born the day after she died in the same hospital and with that in mind, she fell short by a mere fifteen hours.

After my mother’s passing, my father’s health steadily declined. A year before she was diagnosed with duodenal cancer, he was pulled up for an abnormally high level of platelets in his blood. On further investigation, it was discovered with a persistent case of low haemoglobin count. 

Eventually then came the shocking news that he also had Stage III kidney failure. Apart from all of this, his heart was weak and his longstanding fight with diabetes and enlarged prostate all added up to more than any family could handle in addition to my mother’s cancer.

Testimonies Are HIS Stories

"I will proclaim Your Name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise You among Your assembled people." - Psalm 22:22

Khen Lim




Image source: chinachristiandaily.com

A testimony is a way of honouring the Lord. We do so by being a witness for Him to others to tell them about His work in our personal lives or in the corporate life of our church, whichever applies.

Psalm 22:22 is one such example in which the Psalmist expresses his promise to tell others of the greatness of the Lord. Often too, he would ask the Lord to deliver him in order that he could be a witness to God’s salvation. 

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By Khen Lim



Image Source: mozzarellispizzas.com

Chinese New Year is that one time in the world when the Chinese diaspora celebrate in unison. It’s that one event that unites them as a single race with a common reason to celebrate. Chinese New Year has endured over four thousand years and remain the most celebrated of all annual festivities in the world.  

For the Chinese, New Year is a time-honoured tradition steeped in thousands of years of understanding and acceptance but for Christians, the complications are punctuated by the turn of paganism that transformed its origins.

Dealing with Giants

By Khen Lim

Image Source: sanmarcoscommunitychurch.org

I have a brother who used to advise me when I was young how he handled his exam preparations during his university days in Melbourne. It was an advice that has stuck to me till today and now that we’re both in our fifties, it’s now our turn to pass the advice down to the young ones.

He would tell me that of the questions in the exam paper, “do the difficult ones straightaway because they’re the ones that are easy to score. As for the impossible ones, those might take a tad longer.”

It was great advice and one that worked very effectively. It’s also an attitude that isn’t so common these days. Often our progress is stunted by problems that are seemingly impossible to overcome because we’ve made them larger than life. Invariably we back down before we knew what to do with them.

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As the world moves on, a long-forgotten part of the Chilean miners’ story is the one that should have been told

Khen Lim

Image source: australs.blogspot.com

It’s 2014, four years after the near-catastrophic mining accident in Copiapó, Chile. Four years is a long time. Not much of the world remembers it today other than the fact that thirty-three miners walked out alive to the jubilation of not just the country but the whole world.

Finding God's Protection (Psalm 91)

Dissecting Psalm 91 to know how God protects us from evil

Khen Lim

For many, the Iraqi War may have been consigned to the history books, replaced by the looming menace we call ISIS, but there remained many evergreen tales of amazing miracles that reveal a wonderful and honourable God. From the Internet, here are just two such tales: