Jesus, The Giver of Living Water

As a person with an outdoorsy bent, I gravitate toward news articles about hiking mishaps. A common theme emerges: Unprepared hikers become lost in the woods. When park rangers finally located the disoriented hikers, they discover the day trippers often lack the essentials: map, compass, outerwear, and water. The rangers then relate these misadventures to the media hoping that future adventurers might not repeat these foolish mistakes. I think to myself, I would never make the same mistake. Upon reading about such an incident in an arid climate, however, I found myself thinking I never knew that could happen. In that incident, the hiker became lost and eventually succumbed to dehydration. As explained, in low humidity areas, a person’s sweat evaporates instantaneously, leaving the individual unaware of the body’s water loss. Not realizing the dire physical circumstances, the person continues onward until finally overwhelmed by the body’s lack of water. The takeaway from this incident: drink water even when you do not feel thirsty, especially in arid climates.

The spiritual lesson for us: Drink the Living Water that Jesus offers us, even when our spirits do not yearn for hydration. Our spirits, just like our bodies, consistently need to be rehydryated by water.

The Bible tells of Jesus encountering a woman at the well. In the ensuing conversation, he explains, “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.” (John 4.13-14) The scriptures also record Jesus saying loudly to the crowd, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7.37-38). These instances both show Jesus as the Giver of Living Water, and as the commentary in John 7.39 explains, this Living Water is the forthcoming Spirit.

Following Jesus’ illustration, we learn that through Jesus, we can receive the Spirit, and the Spirit is as essential to our spiritual life as water is to our natural life. Just as our natural bodies require frequent hydration, so also our spiritual lives need regularly to be infused by the Spirit. We need to be constantly seeking Jesus with our minds, hearts, and souls, and in doing do, drink generously of the living water. Too frequently, however, we fall into the arid climate trap. We fail to recognize our spiritual lives are suffering from dehydration. We feel fine. We look fine. We act fine. But we are not fine. And we only discover our unwellness when we respond to a minor nuisance with an ungodly wrath. “Why,” we ask ourselves, “did I react so angrily?” The answer, most often, is the dryness of spiritual lives. Too late we realize that the tropical rain forest has become a shrub-less desert. We never chose the desert. We just chose not watering the rain forest.

How can we drink fully and frequently of the Living Water? Jesus hints at the answer when he tells his follower to “take up their cross daily” (Luke 9.230). How frequently? Daily. Not when we feel like it. Not when we need help. Not when it is convenient. No, take up the cross daily. Every day, let’s drink a glass full of the Living Water. Read one chapter from the Bible. Listen to a worship song. Take one minute to be still before God. Take one minute to remember God’s goodness. Take one minute to pray for our church. Read a devotion. Every sip helps. Every drop makes a difference. And then, we find ourselves traversing a spiritual desert, we can survive until we reach the oasis. We might arrive haggard. But, we will arrive.     

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