SURVIVING
THE SAHARA

Topics: Desires; Discontent; Longing; Satisfaction; Thirst

References: Psalm 42:1; John 4:6–29

Lag Lag and a companion were crossing the desert when their truck broke down. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything to quench their terrible thirst. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there. They had food but did not eat, fearing it would magnify their thirst.

Dehydration, not starvation, kills wanderers in the desert, and thirst is the most terrible of all human sufferings. Lag Lag progressed from eudipsia, “ordinary thirst,” through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning “temporary intense thirst,” to polydipsia, “sustained excessive thirst,” which is the kind of thirst that drives one to drink anything, including urine and blood.

Radiator water is what Lag Lag and his assistant started drinking during the polydipsia phase. To survive, they were willing to drink poison.

Many people do something similar in the spiritual realm. They depend on things like money, sex, and power to quench spiritual thirst. But such thirst quenchers are in reality spiritual poison, a dangerous substitute for the “living water” Jesus promised.

—William Langewiesche, Sahara Unveiled (Vintage, 1997)