top of page
Writer's pictureCongregational Federation

Day 8: Living water


Water gushing from a tap

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.”

(John 4: vv13-14)


Many years ago, a friend and I walked part of the Southwest Peninsula coastal footpath. We were camping and so had to carry everything we needed with us. One day we passed through the Kimmeridge Firing Range in Dorset. Under MOD regulations, you can only walk this stretch of the footpath at certain times and you once you enter, you must walk through and leave the same day. No camping! It was late in the evening when we finally left the range and, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, we found the first place we could and stopped for the night.


The following morning, we packed up early in search of food and, more importantly, water. There were no villages along the coast but finally we found a stream. Gratefully we plunged our mugs into the water and lifted them to our lips only to find it was ... contaminated; smelly, vile and discoloured. At that moment, I made a vow never again to take for granted fresh, clean drinking water available whenever I wanted it.


More recently I was in Sierra Leone. We were staying in basic but comfortable accommodation in a town a long way from the capital Freetown. On our way back to the airport, we stopped at a hotel in Freetown for lunch. As I visited the washroom, I mused that it had been 10 days since I had seen a running tap or a flushing toilet.


However much events like this shape us, we do take the wonderful gift of fresh water for granted. We know that water is vital, but it is only when we don’t have it (literally and metaphorically) on tap that we begin to truly value it.


In Jesus’ time, everyone understood the value of water. For a well in your village to run dry was a serious matter. The above verses from John’s gospel come from one of the best-known stories from Jesus’ ministry, when he met the “woman at the well”. The woman was a Samaritan, regarded as mixed race, part Jewish and part Gentile. Because of this, and her lifestyle, she was shunned by her neighbours and had to come to the well to draw water at midday, the hottest time of the day. In meeting with her, Jesus was reaching out beyond the Jewish people to whom he usually preached. And he used this encounter to offer her the wonderful gift of a new “living water”, one from which she would never be thirsty again. The woman was intrigued and excited by this “living water”. She told her neighbours, who urged Jesus to stay so they could hear more.


Do we still feel the excitement of this gift of “living water”? Perhaps, just as we should make sure we do not take fresh water for granted, we should reflect on, and give thanks for, the precious gift of “living water”. Let it be our prayer that it can become in us “a spring of water welling up to eternal life”.


Philip Clarke

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page