Living Water

Ah yes, cool, refreshing water! (Pour yourself a glass of water and take a drink.) Do you drink a lot of water? How much water do you drink each day? Most experts agree that we should drink about eight or nine glasses of water a day. Of course, that depends on how hot it is and whether we are doing a lot of running and playing. If so, we may need more water. Of course there are other things to drink besides water. Sometimes I like to have a glass of milk—especially with cookies—and I may drink a soda if I am eating a hamburger, but there is no substitute for water when you are hot and thirsty.

The part of the world where Jesus lived was very hot and dry. One day, as he was traveling through Samaria, Jesus passed through a small village by the name of Sychar. Jacob's well was there and Jesus, hot and tired from the long walk, sat down beside the well about noontime to rest. Soon a Samaritan woman came to the well to fill her water jar. "Please give me a drink," Jesus said to the woman.

The woman was shocked! You see, in those days a Jew wouldn't be caught dead talking to a Samaritan. "Why are you, a Jew, asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?"

Jesus answered, "If you knew who it is who is asking you for a drink, you would ask him for a drink and he would give you living water. Everyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I give will never thirst."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming to this well to draw water." She didn't understand that the "living water" was to believe that Jesus was the Savior.

"Go and get your husband and bring him here," Jesus told the woman.

"I don't have a husband," she replied.

"You are right," Jesus answered. "You have had five husbands and the man you are living with now is not your husband."

"You must be a prophet because you know everything I have done," the woman said. Then Jesus explained to her that he was the Messiah. The woman was so excited that she ran into the city and told her friends, "Come and see a man that told me everything I have done. Surely he must be the Christ."

Because of what the woman told them, many Samaritans came to know Jesus and accept his offer of living water. They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Ah yes, cool refreshing water! (Take a drink.) It refreshes the body, but it can't compare to the "Living Water" that Jesus gives. It refreshes our soul!

Dear Jesus, As the deer longs for streams of water, so do we long for you, the living water. Amen.