The Well

Some days are better than others.  I think we all would say this.  But imagine this day with me a minute or two… 

A lady is thirsty, and she goes to the same well she has been going to all her life.  It’s old and worn and deep.  It’s the same well her father and her father’s father used to get water for themselves and all her family.  She’s there once again, alone.  She isn’t the best dressed or even remotely popular; you might call her an outcast.  Some have called her much worse; you see she has a reputation.  She has walked all the way out to the well and is taking a break from the hot sun, the hot Samaritan sun.  Much to her surprise a man approaches her and speaks to her…

He asks her for a drink.  She is a little startled by a man speaking to her at all, but his accent and clothing give him away as a Jew.  She is apprehensive, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”  She is used to getting the cold shoulder and the brush off and expects that will probably be all he has to say, but he goes on, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”  She begins to think that this man may have been out in the sun too long, but something about him is different and keeps her talking.  She talks, or more importantly, listens long enough to have a life changing experience. 

She has come to the true well, Jesus.  You probably have recognized by now that this is the 4^th chapter of John’s Gospel.  This is one of several places Jesus mentions the water he can provide, “living water.”  He mentions it in verse 10 we have already mentioned and again in verses 13 and 14 of John 4, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”   Wow…  An ordinary day had become a trip to THE WELL.  “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)  “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:35)

How many of us waste our days running to this or to that to try to fix our problems or satisfy a desire?  We seek and do not find, we toil and work and yet have no peace.  Maybe it is time for all of us to take a trip to the well, for a big cool drink of the living water only Jesus Christ can provide.  "There’s a fountain free, ’tis for you and me, Let us haste, O haste to its brink; ‘tis a fount of love from the source above, And He bids us all freely drink.   There’s a living well and its waters swell, and eternal life they can give; and we joyful sing, ever spring, O spring, as we haste to drink and to live."[1]  Will you come to the fountain free?  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting thirsty. 

God Bless.

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[1] "There’s A Fountain Free" The text was written by Mrs. Mary Bridges Canedy Slade (1826-1882). The tune (Free Waters) was composed by Asa Brooks Everett (1828-1875).

Deep Roots

A living sacrifice, take up your cross, if they persecute Me then they will surely persecute you… those are tough things to swallow, aren’t they?  Tough maybe, but all warnings from God’s word that things are not always promised to be easy on the Christian walk.  God told us there would be days like this, so to speak.  These are the days and the times we must all dig deep.  This is when it would be good to have been planted by that stream of living water the Psalmist and Jeremiah talk about in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17.  Jeremiah even mentions the roots spreading out in verse 8, a firm foundation.  Let’s take a minute to think out what can ground us and give our roots the depth needed to stand the heat of this world and the wiles of the devil.

Let’s take a look at Romans 12:1-2.  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. ² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.  Paul is actually begging here.  This is one of those times that he is not speaking a command, but even more strongly, he is begging the brothers and sisters at Rome to present their bodies as a living sacrifice.  Why…Because of the “mercies of God.”  Present your bodies as the sacrifice.  This is literally the word for what is being sacrificed.  This is an all-in affair.  A sacrifice can never go back to being anything else once sacrificed.  It is final and complete.  This is a total surrender.  That my friend is the key… that is what grows deep roots… that is what leads to being a true follower of Jesus, being all-in.  Paul says that is our only reasonable response to god’s mercy, our only logical act of worship to One who gave so much. 

We might ask how in the world can I do that?  Paul explains in the very next verse, “be transformed.”  Be changed.  Don’t let yourself be shaped by what everyone else does, but rather let yourselves be transformed by a whole new way of thinking.  Paul emphasizes the transforming and new life of a Christian in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.  Let’s live our lives deeply rooted in the newness that is the mercy of God’s love each day of our lives, because that is, of course, the only reasonable response to something so amazing as God’s love and mercy.

God Bless!