There’s a recurring conversation I have with my parents ever since moving back home. At 8.00pm they ask me if I’m eating. I reply not today. 8.30pm reaches and I get the same question. Still not hungry. At 9.30pm the question comes again and if I happen to leave my room at 11.00pm the inquiry is still there. The concern of the first question is nice but by the 5th ask it feels a bit much.
In John 4:1-26 Jesus pushes in on a Samaritan woman in a similar way. Their conversation starts out normal enough but Jesus gets invasive to reveal she is thirsty. Many of us have encountered some religious experience. Maybe it rubbed you the wrong way and you opted out. “Don’t tell me I need God” you say. “Ah but what if I told you, you are already looking for me.” Jesus replies. Let’s investigate the conversation Jesus had with this woman by a well.
Jesus: Please give me a drink
Woman: You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink.
Jesus: If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water.
Rather odd; he interrupts her errands to offer her something she didn’t ask for. Like my parents Jesus sees this woman is in need she just doesn’t know it. He won’t budge until she has what she has been looking for.
Woman: But sir, you don’t have a rope or bucket and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water?
Jesus: Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. It will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
Woman: Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.
She doesn’t get it. But to be fair the term living water sounds so ambiguous. The thirst for water is simple to understand. Your body gets dehydrated, you drink. The thirst of the soul is more complex. It’s hard to describe exactly what you are longing for. Perhaps love? Some security? A little pleasure? Our soul is our most inward self. It is like a bucket of desire where we take in what truly satisfies us. There is a lot around us giving us something we want. Resources, relationships and influence are a good starter pack to a fulfilled life. We fill our comforts with resources, our hearts with relationships and our minds with influence. We are content. Then in comes Jesus telling us we need him. Perhaps we have been filling the wrong bucket.
Jesus: Go call your husband and come back.
Woman: I have no husband.
Jesus: You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth.
She was distracted. Drinking from so many broken wells she couldn’t feel the dryness in her throat. God doesn’t expose her life to condemn her but to give her what those 5 husbands couldn’t. Only when we see these empty wells we’ve been digging can we even begin to open ourselves to living water. We are like her. We all have our own false wells; success, romantic love, acclaim from people, casual sex, etc. They feel like water in the moment but they just can’t fill our souls. Sin and the distractions of the good things in this world can compound a callous layer on us that masks the dryness. But when you encounter living water you will know and distinguish the real from what feels like real.
We get this water by going to the one who offers it. As seen with this woman, Jesus goes around looking for thirsty souls. Read the full story in the bible to get the entire context. He wants to satisfy our deepest desires. What he gives cannot end. Like a spring the living water keeps bubbling over passing by every needy part of you over and over again. With this refreshment you won’t have to keep going around looking to be fulfilled, you will have all you need.
Taste this satisfaction and you’ll realize it for yourself. Trust in Jesus and let him into your life that he may satisfy your soul. With Christmas scenes all around us what a wonderful time to find this living water that only the holy baby in a manger can give.
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