Living Water

“If you only knew the Gift God has for you, and Who you are speaking to,” Jesus had said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “you would ask Me, and I would give you living water.”

“But Sir,” she responded, “you have no rope and no bucket, and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water?  Besides, this well is Jacob’s well; he drank its water, along with his sons and his livestock, and he left it to us. Are you greater than he was, that you could give better water?”

“Anyone who drinks this water,” Jesus replied, “will quickly become thirsty again. But those who drink the water that I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes  a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

In the dry lands of the Middle East, a well is a priceless resource. For the many hundreds of years since Jacob and his tribe had lived in Canaan, his well had survived as a lasting legacy for his descendants. In the little village of Sychar, the people may have been Samaritans, despised by the Jews to the north and the south, but they had Jacob’s well as their own. Its waters sustained them, as well as the travellers who passed through.

Jesus sat by this well, asking the Samaritan woman for a drink of its water. And as she engaged in conversation with Him, He invited her to ask Him for the gift of Living Water, Eternal Life.

The Living Water Jesus offered was not a great tank or cistern, filled full to last for many years. It is a spring, always fresh, always bubbling up and overflowing. It is Himself, His Life, His Presence, His Spirit– always sufficient, always abundant and overflowing, to touch others along the way. He once described this life, of one who believes in Him, as rivers of living water flowing out from his innermost being.

“You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says, ” Though He was rich, yet He became poor for your sakes, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich.” There was Jesus, the source of living water, sitting hot, tired and thirsty by Jacob’s well; he was bringing the Gift of God, Living Water, Himself, to enrich any and all who would believe in Him.