Day 38: Living Water

 

John 4:10-14

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

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.”

Comments

As often happens in John’s gospel, a key phrase has a double meaning. “Living water” could mean running water such as a stream whose supply is endless rather than a well that might dry up. Or it could mean “life-giving water,” an idea that would resonate with those who lived in life-threatening desert conditions.

What Jesus offered the Samaritan woman easily fit both descriptions: an endless supply of that which is truly life-giving.

Reflections

Do you experience an unending source of life within or do you have to find new inspiration repeatedly because your life has dried up?

If you have found an unending source of love and life, who have you told about it? Don’t you think others would be interested in something like that?

Prayer

Heavenly Father, may your love spring up within me as living water, and may I be ready to share its abundance with everyone who is thirsting for it.