Drawing Living Water

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” John 4:7-15

Water is essential to life. I learned that lesson again while we were traveling in New Mexico. I dehydrate very easily and found myself a bit overcome the first day we were there. I was thirsty but didn't even realize I had dehydrated before I began feeling quite ill. My balance was off, my stomach queasy. I finally had to go back to Andrea's house and lay down with a huge glass of water by my side. It took sometime for me to recover my equilibrium. Water is so essential to life that it comes before food and shelter in our basic needs. We who live by seemingly endless streams of water have no idea what it is like to exist in the desert. Water is essential to life and living water, that precious gift from God is life abundant, overflowing and renewing as a primal mountain stream.

Today, we find Jesus in conversation with the last person on the planet he should talk to. She's among the enemy people, she has lived a shady life, and she continues to live on the margins of society, outcast and rejected from society because of her lifestyle. Jesus talks to her and asks her to give him water. She asks him to give her the water of life when their conversation is done. It is her witness, the witness of the fallen and the outcast that changes her whole village and her whole community. They all reach for the love of God because of the testimony of an outcast. God's love broke through all barriers that day, for all of us.

Today, I want to live beyond the barriers of our times and our society, knowing that God goes before me in crossing every barrier and every line. There is no isolation from God for any of us, no matter how fallen and despised we are. In God's reign, in the here and now, there is living water enough for all. May we all act as the carriers of the living water, crossing all lines to open offer others the heart of God.