| Everyone is soaked. Brightly colored water guns spray streams of water as squeals from children and adults rise in the air.
Sounds like a suburban backyard in summer, doesn’t it? Not quite. This particular splash fight just took place in Thailand during a festival called Songkran. Marking the beginning of the traditional Thai New Year, the Songkran celebration is known as the biggest water fight in the world. Representing a fresh start, cleansing, and washing away the previous year, Songkran lasts for three days. And Christians in Thailand have mixed feelings about it.
Dream Waiwang, for example, sees nothing wrong with celebrating and playing in the water fights. But she does get concerned about reckless driving, drunkenness, and fighting during the festival. Goi Manasakulpong feels similarly, pointing out that Christians should draw the line at pouring water over statues of Buddha or seeking blessings from monks.
Songkran includes a great deal of time spent with family, which Waiwang gives Thai Christians the opportunity to demonstrate their love and respect for their relatives. Above all, Christians have the opportunity to see in the Songkran celebration the longing that each of us, all over the world, carry inside of us: the longing to be washed clean, to drink water that will satisfy us forever.
“As water sloshes over the streets of Chiang Mai, Chaiboonsiri speaks to his congregants and nonbelieving Thais about living water,” writes Tessa Sanchez for CT. “This Sunday, he plans to preach from John 4, where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that if she drinks from the water he offers, she will never thirst again.”
May we remember that the same is true for us—that in Jesus, we have access to streams of living water that will never run dry. |
