In a world fraying at the seams from war, inflation, politics, hardship, loneliness and despair — we repeatedly reach for hope, like travelers desperately searching for water in an unending desert. This longing only sharpens at Christmas, a haunting reminder that wealth, success, and comfort can never fill it.
But Christmas is also a season when light can break into the darkness. That sounds like a sentimental and familiar line from a greeting card only because we’ve grown numb to the symbolism of the holiday and lost the core. Yet, that very familiarity only amplifies the beauty of a truth hidden in plain sight. It whispers to all who are parched and weary, to those dying of thirst in the desert of life: there is an oasis of living water, that will quench our deepest longings.
I recently sat down with Hilda Muluh, a woman who knows firsthand the desert of suffering and the joy of discovering that living water. Her journey points to the true meaning of Christmas, that the answer to our emptiness can’t be found in what the world offers, only in the one who came to fill it.
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Hilda’s life began like most, full of hope and potential. As a young girl in Cameroon, she was her family’s brightest star — the one expected to lift them out of poverty. But her life took an unimaginable turn when muscular dystrophy began to strip her body of strength.
She went from running freely as a child to needing a wheelchair, and then, as a teenager, to near-total immobility. Independence gave way to utter dependence, her body no longer obeying her will.
Hilda experienced a cruel reversal of everything a teenage girl longs for in life. While her friends discovered the joy of first crushes, the warmth of a hug, and the simple freedom to walk hand in hand with loved ones, Hilda became a silent observer of life.
She watched life from the sidelines — unable to join the adventures or the milestones that mark youth. Soon, the effects of her disease took their deadliest turn when it stole her joy, her laughter and then finally, her hope.
The simple gifts we take for granted, movement, touch, freedom — became for Hilda a hunger so deep it seemed nothing could fill it. Trapped, unseen, and unheard, her heart’s cry was, “Why me?”
“I felt like my life was over,” she said. “I couldn’t see a purpose in anything anymore.”
Hilda’s story echoes the hidden crisis of the heart and soul for so many of us. We live with the gnawing sense that life has cheated us — that the things we chase to satisfy our thirst fail us when finally gained. Success, relationships and wealth, glitter from afar but turn to dust in our hands.
It’s the core of the human predicament, we seek fulfillment in things that cannot satisfy. And when we lose them — or when they fail, we are left with the hollow ache of our soul’s deepest longing.
Hilda experienced this ache in a profound way. She pleaded with God for healing, thinking that her joy was dependent on the restoration of her life’s circumstances. When healing didn’t come, her despair deepened. Like a traveler in the desert chasing a mirage, she came to the natural conclusion that there was no oasis, only desert.
But it was in the midst of her suffering — when all her striving had been stripped away — that Hilda found something far greater than physical healing.
A friend handed her a book by Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who had lost all mobility after a diving accident but had found purpose in her brokenness. Joni’s story planted a seed of hope in Hilda’s heart: perhaps suffering and meaninglessness weren’t the end of her story.
Slowly, Hilda began to surrender to God. She let go of the life she had lost and began a journey to find an oasis in her life’s journey through a desert she had no hope of crossing on her own. She was intrigued by a simple Bible verse that said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37-38).
Finding God, Hilda found the living water her soul had been thirsting for. Her circumstances never changed; she remained imprisoned in her unresponsive body, but her spirit came alive. The God she once accused of abandoning her became her deepest comfort.
“I desperately wanted healing,” Hilda told me, “But what I found was Jesus. Only give me Jesus, the rest of the world can fade away.”
This is the heart of Christmas: the arrival of the One who satisfies our deepest needs, not by changing our circumstances, but by transforming us from within.
Over 2,000 years ago, surrounded by animals, waste and forgotten shepherds, God answered the thirst of the human heart. The world at that time was much like ours today: fractured, weary and yearning for hope. People longed for a king who would conquer their oppressors and change their circumstances. But instead, God sent His Son to conquer something far greater — the emptiness, and death that plague the human heart.
He came to satisfy our deepest thirst for life, love, meaning, and connection. He is the well that never runs dry, the source of hope and peace that can’t be broken by suffering or loss.
Hilda’s story is a picture of this truth. In surrendering, she found a treasure that far outweighs anything this world can offer.
We all are familiar with the desert journey in life. Suffering, loss and unfulfilled longing never leave us. So, we chase after mirages, believing that if we could just achieve this, possess that, or escape our pain, we would finally be satisfied.
But the fact that the mirage is a figment and only a cruel hoax, doesn’t negate that fact that there is an oasis in the journey of life. It only underscores that that truth is hidden and surrounded by counterfeits meant to divert our path and leave us thirstier.
God doesn’t promise to remove us from the desert, but rather to walk with us through it, and guide us to one oasis after another along the journey.
The answer to our thirst isn’t in achievement or possession. It’s in the One who came to give life. As Hilda discovered, there’s water at the oasis.
That water isn’t an answer, it is THE answer. It is the source of life that wells up within when everything else falls apart.
Christmas whispers an invitation given so long ago, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”
The birth we celebrate at Christmas was God’s gift to a weary world — the only true answer and lasting hope for the human heart.
That is an eternal message that is easily dismissed as religious sentiment. But for those willing to pause and consider the depths of this truth — to wrestle with the why and the how — it marks the beginning of a journey. A journey that leads out of the barren desert of life’s emptiness and into the oasis of living water for those who hear and respond to God’s whisper.
In life’s deepest pain, Hilda heard the whisper and began the journey to the oasis, and it transformed her life.
The living water is waiting, and it is enough.
God’s speed!
Jeff King has served as ICC President since 2003 and is one of the world’s top experts on religious persecution. He has advocated for the persecuted everywhere, testifying before the U.S. Congress on religious freedom. He has been interviewed by leading media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The Washington Times. Jeff King is also available as a guest speaker. To learn more, go to Christian Persecution and Spiritual Growth Speaker | Jeff King Blog.
