Cool Water

Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 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.” (John 4:6-14 ESV).

I can remember playing outdoors as a young boy (and, yes, I know that was a very long time ago), when being thirsty was just a matter of finding the nearest outdoor water hose attached to the faucet and turning it for a long drink. I am well aware that in today’s world that would not be recommended. And, though I am not recommending that remedy, I confess I did survive the outrageous behavior surprisingly well. The point is that there was always a source of water nearby. Unlike the day in which Jesus lived in Israel, we had fear of thirst. Our reading today tells of an encounter Jesus had with a woman at the town well. He was thirsty from his day and asked for a drink. The conversation led to Jesus’ description of himself as “living water.” Of course, he was talking about the “water” of eternal life that he would secure through his death and resurrection. We live outside of the range of city services. Consequently we have our own water well. It was dug to a depth of about 200 feet through some of the hardest ground in the county. We have a lot of rock and clay in our soil. The rock is good for foundations, but difficult to drill through. Because of the level of difficulty the cost per foot of depth is a little higher than some of the sandier soil in other parts of the county. At fifty dollars per foot, it gets pretty expensive to get to the first aquifer. However, even $10,000 is worth having a reliable source of fresh water. When Jesus told the Samaritan woman who he was, and she believed. The price God paid to take away her sin was far greater than $10,000. It cost Jesus his life as our substitute. Have you been refreshed by the well of God’s abounding grace? You can be. It is just as easy as turning on the faucet used to be for me as a kid!