Water in the Desert

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John 4:7-15 ESV).

Imagine that you find yourself in a drought-ridden place, a desert, and suddenly realize that you’re thirsty, very thirsty. You hear about a well, but decide it’s too far away. You’ll never make it. There must be something closer. Or maybe you do go there, but when you arrive there’s no way to get at the water. You have to go back and find a bucket and some rope. The temptation to give up is great, but you continue to seek the water. You go and get the necessary equipment. Expectation grows; but then you lower your bucket to the full extent of the rope you have with you, and still there’s no water. Upset, perhaps you go away and tell anyone who’ll listen that the well is dry, and that anyone who says otherwise is a liar. Feeling aggrieved takes your mind off your thirst for a little while. However, soon your thirst overtakes your feelings. You still need the water. Disappointment, anger, and despair would be perfectly understandable in these circumstances, but a wiser reaction might equally be to pause and ask if the real problem wasn’t your rope being too short, or your bucket too leaky. Maybe you just didn’t get deep enough into the well. Sometimes that’s our problem with our faith. Sometimes, as adults, people do not get what they want, what they need, what they crave because it seems too remote from their experience, too far away. Then, when you do make an attempt, access to the refreshing nourishment you seek is not easy; there is neither rope nor bucket. You have to work too hard than you feel capable. This is when we mistake the well for the water. Religion is not the answer; Jesus is the answer. The woman at the well in our reading needed to learn that one truth. When she did, she was no longer driven by her insatiable thirst. Come to Christ and enjoy a cool drink of water whenever you need it.