“Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.” “Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her.
John 4:15-16 NLT
I have always consumed experiences and craved knowledge. I gorged on information, so becoming a Christian in my late teens I consumed scripture and quickly knew a lot. This knowledge was in my head, enough to get me started in Christian ministry successfully, but incapable of establishing any deep and meaningful friendship with God.
Like this Samaritan woman I craved knowledge so I might construct a life of my own choosing, freed from the basic necessity to survive. Knowledge was an idol at whose feet I worshipped and in return received my own self-satisfaction and realisation. It was also a barrier to growing in friendship with God. It was like gazing at a series of nature photographs while riding in the back of a car as it travelled through the most wonderful countryside. I settled for images when I could have lifted my eyes and gazed out of the window.
The Samaritan craves living water to ease her load. After all, wasn’t Jesus just the most recent in a long line of men she’d expected to rescue her? I too thought knowledge might somehow rescue me. It couldn’t and didn’t. I needed living water; to ditch the books and other favoured sources of knowledge and find the living knowledge who is God.
Can you let go of the tangible, material objective and seek the intangible reality that lies behind the material? Is that confusing? Well, no more than the riddle Jesus posed the Samaritan. She persevered with Jesus and got her reward. Living water forever, with a new perspective and the gift of rebirth and so to revisit all manner of choices.
QUESTION
Are you willing to search for and follow after the living Christ?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, may your living water spring up in me, cleansing, refreshing and flowing out to bless others.
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