Read
John 4:13-15 (NIV)
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Reflect
The desert makes you thirsty. The heat dries up the soul, and the empty promises of satisfaction turn out to be nothing more than a mirage. There comes a turning point when discontent and dissatisfaction awaken desire and only the real thing will do.
The desert life of the woman at the well has been examined countless times, and she’s been chastised for her promiscuous record of jumping from one bed to the next, scoring five husbands, and then shacking up with a man who was not even her husband.
But is that what was happening here? Look again. What rights did women have in this culture and time? None. They were seen as the property of the men in their lives, first their fathers and then their husbands. And the husband could cast out the wife for nearly any reason he wanted.
So perhaps what we have here is a woman who has been rejected and cast aside by the people in life she counted on the most. Promise after promise, broken and empty, a mirage in the desert. She was disappointed, dissatisfied, desperate. Thirsty for the real thing. In Jesus, she found every promise fulfilled and overflowing.
Pray
Jesus, you are the living water and the only thing to satisfy my thirst. Keep me dissatisfied with anything but the real thing. Amen.
Conference
What thirst tends to lead you astray? What empty promise and mirage seems most enticing to you? Why?
For the Awakening,
Matt LeRoy