An ordinary man, weary and hungry and thirsty after a 40-mile journey on foot, asked a woman for a drink at a well. Yet ironically, despite asking this, the man went on to offer her a gift of water – water that would quench spiritual thirst, water that would be ‘an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.’ (John 4:12, The Message)
Water symbolises life to us – and Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (Jn 14:6) God, the spring of living water (Jer 17:13), is the only One who can satisfy the deep spiritual longings within us, but so often, we do prefer our own strategies and plans to God’s. If we have access to the Life, to Jesus,however, then we can receive this spring of water welling up to eternal life. It’s not something we earn; it’s not something we deserve. It is the gift of God. In John 7, Jesus talks again about water and John tells us that He is talking about the Holy Spirit who was to come on the church after Jesus had been glorified. (John 7:37-38) If we believe, we receive the Holy Spirit as ‘a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.’ (Eph 1:14)
The gift of eternal life and the gift of the Holy Spirit are not just something to guarantee us a place in heaven when we die, however. The Holy Spirit in us is the source of life right now as well as for the future. But if we want to be satisfied and quenched, if we want to live life with purpose and joy and hope, we have to let go of our own sources of water. We have to leave our own water jars behind, just like the woman did, so that we can receive God’s gift of living water, so that we can continually be filled with the Spirit. (Eph 5:18)
The only way to have our spiritual thirst quenched is to come to God to be filled. We have to put down our own water jar and come to Jesus. The woman said, ‘Give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.’ (John 4:15) We too have to admit our need and come to God so that we do not have to keep relying on the world’s ways to get by. The legends talk about the fountain of youth as the elixir of life; Jesus tells us simply that this living water is found in Him. We don’t have to look any further.